
?:<???^'^?5=??5=?5s'5?;5e???^^ /i 



AN D 

















>. . v -■, )jC(C>A'A"''."iX','.i.i.iQ 
li i^li.in I _) i.in.<(i,)'i'iVi,H •ti I i I iM I ■ ?i 1 



^■^<^'%.<%<^-% 



# LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 



$\H^ -- |opgngM|o. 






^^^ -. ..L..? I 



I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ^ 



THE 



GREAT CONFLICT, 

CHRIST AND ANTICHRIST, 

THE CHURCH AND THE APOSTASY, 
^B ^^abolrreb bg tlje prophets mxii Jelhuateb ht Jistorg. 



By H. LOOMIS, 
Af THOE OF " The Land of Shadowing Wings ; or, Emfibk of tiib Sea.'' 



" Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her glfi^; 
that ye receive not of her plagues." — Rev. xviii, 4. 




NEW YOKK : 
NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

CINCINNATI: HITOHCOGK & WALDEN. 

1874. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, Ly 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 

in the Ofiice of the Librarian of Congress at ^Yaslilngtoii. 



PREFACE. 



-4~»- 



THE great question of the hour is 
the influence and designs of the 
Papacy on the religious and civil insti- 
tutions of this country. 

Romanism, standing alone and by 
itself, would not be a power much to be 
dreaded. But in its facile combination 
with every other evil in the land — igno- 
rance, demagogism, and political vil- 
lainy — its supreme, unprincipled selfish- 
ness in the promotion of its own inter- 
ests — its sworn allegiance to a foreign 
power now in collision with nearly all 
the civil powers of Europe — its cherished 
principles of infallibility, and its divine 
right to control all the civil governments 



4 Preface. 

of the world — its dark and insidious 
Jesuitism in the management of its af- 
fairs and in the gaining its ends — make 
it a power to be carefully watched, if 
not dreaded. 

Every enlightened patriot, in love with 
a free republican government by a 
moral, intelligent people — every Chris- 
tian who loves the truth as it is in Jesus, 
and the souls of his fellow-men — should 
be awake and ready for the gathering 
conflict. " It was while men slept" that 
the " enemy sowed tares among the 
wheat, and went his way." 

The real nature and character of this 
vast, wide-spread, and yet compact or- 
ganization — this foreign power ever}^- 
where operative for its own ends, among 
us — should be more generally studied 
and known by every American, every 
Christian, as it has been delineated by 



Preface. 5 

the prophets of God, and written out in 
its terrible history. 

But far the larger share of the minis- 
try of the different Protestant denomi- 
nations are so overwhelmed with the 
demands for much preaching, and the 
daily pressing calls for other ministerial 
labors, that they have neither the time, 
nor, often, the facilities, for the study of 
the prophecies relative to, or the vo- 
luminous histories of, this power. The 
same is still more generally true of the 
laity, both old and young, of the com- 
munity. Furthermore, so much has been 
written on the prophecies, and so diverse 
have been the interpretations, and so 
dark are many of the symbolical repre- 
sentations in these visions, and so much 
historic knowledge is required for any 
just appreciation of the prophetic writ- 
ings, that the great mass of Bible readers 



6 Preface. 

even, turn away from them, as incompre- 
hensible and unprofitable. Yet they are 
in the Bible ; " and all Scripture is given 
by inspiration of God, and is profitable 
for doctrine and instruction in right- 
eousness." 

The following pages are designed for 
just these classes of readers ; to meet 
what seems to the writer a great and 
present want in the state of the public 
mind in this country on this increasingly 
absorbing subject. 

This little volume does not profess 
to be a critical exegesis or exposition of 
the predictions of the Great Apostasy, 
but only to group them together, and 
to give such a general outline, such gen- 
eral principles of interpretation, of their 
symbolical representations ; in short, to 
throw so much light on these pages of 
prophecy as to lead the reader with a 



Preface. 7 

new, clearer, and deeper interest, to the 
study of the whole Bible for its own in- 
terpretation of itself : nor does it profess 
to go at length into the many voluminous 
and able histories of Romanism, but 
only to gather from them a few indis- 
putable facts to convict Rome of being 
THE Antichrist seen and denounced by 
the prophets of God in their visions of 
the Almighty. 

The book is by design a small volume, 
to be within the reach of the many, can 
be read through in a few hours ; yet it 
presents the great features of the terrible 
Antichrist of the prophets, the promi- 
nent, admitted facts in its bloody history, 
and the obvious arguments against this 
oppressive and dangerous system. It is 
not its object to awaken prejudice or ill- 
will against the masses or individuals 
involved in that strange delusion, but to 



8 Preface. 

awaken a deeper sympathy and a more 
tender earnestness in efforts for their 
enlightenment and conversion to Jesus 
from the errors and thick darkness of 
Romanism, and so utterly to consume it 
from the earth by the genuine conver- 
sion of its deluded votaries. 

To God and the Church catholic is 
the volume dedicated by the 

Author. 

Brooklyn, N. Y., 
70 Hanson Place, 1874. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE OPPOSING POWERS IN THE CONFLICT. 

The Prophecies — Questionable Principles of Interpretation 
— The Opening History of the Conflict Page 13 

CHAPTER II. 

THE KEY TO RIGHT INTERPRETATION. 

The Visions of the Earlier Prophets confined to the Mes- 
siah — Only Ezekiel and Daniel seem to have had Visions of 
the Great Apostasy 27 

CHAPTER III. 

THE LAST ANTICHRIST OF THE PROPHETS. 

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream — The Interpretation — Daniel's 
Vision — The Explanation 34 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT PROPHECIES OF THE ANTICHRIST. 

Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians and to Timothy — The 
Traditions of the Early Fathers 44 



lO Contents. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE VISIONS OF ST. JOHN. 

Meaning of the Symbols in the Vision — Symbols of the 
True Church — Symbol of the Opposing Power — The Symbols 
of the Apostasy — The Beast that Was, and Is Not, and Yet 
Is — The Deadly Wound of the Beast — The Opening Con- 
flict — The Opening of the Six Seals — The Sounding of the 
Seven Trumpets — The Pouring Out of the Seven Vials — The 
Prophetic Marks of Antichrist Page 49 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE HISTORY OF ANTICHRIST, OR THE APOSTASY. 

The first mark verified by History — An Apostasy 
Gradual in its Development — Beginning in a Declension 
in the Apostles' Days — The Judaizing Tendency of some 
of the Early Christians to the Head and Horns — Cypri- 
an's Agency in the Third Century — Controversy about St. Pe- 
ter's Chair 78 



CHAPTER VII. 

the second mark is the time of its manifestation. 

The Little Horn growing up among the Ten Horns — The 
Two- Horned Lamb — History of the Beginning and Growth 
of the Papacy — The Condition of the Civil Roman Empire 
at the same time — Its breaking up into the Smaller King- 
dom g6 



Contents. i i 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THIRD — THE TRIPLE CROWN, AND REIGN OVER THE KINGS. 

History of the Reign of the Roman Pontiffs over the King- 
doms of Europe — St. Patrick not a Roman Catholic — For the 
Information of Irishmen — How Ireland became Roman — 
How it came under the British Crown Page iii 

CHAPTER IX. 

FOURTH AND F[FTH — HE SITS IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

The Blasphemous Assumptions of the Papacy — Holds the 
Keys of Heaven and Hell — The Mother of Harlots and 
Abominations of the Earth — History of Papal Intrigues in 
Temporal Government 148 

CHAPTER X. 

SIXTH — DRUNKEN WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS. 

History of Roman Persecutions — Slaughter of the Paulicians 
— History of the Inquisition — Its Murders — Slaughter of the 
Waldenses and Albigenses — Massacre of St. Bartholomew's 
Day — Slaughter of Jews and Saracens 174 

CHAPTER XI. 

SEVENTH — THE OVERTHROW, OR FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

The Instruments of her Destruction — Gored by the Horns 
of the same Beast that has Carried Her — The Final Consump- 



12 Contents. 

tion by the Word of God — History of the Bible in Ger- 
many, England, and in all Europe, and in American Romish 
Countries Page 198 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN THIS CRISIS OF THE 
CONFLICT. 

I. A Bible Education of the Nation — The Bible in the 
Common School — 2. The Bible to be Carried into the whole 
Roman World — The Spirit with which we should meet Ro- 
mans 216 



THE 

GREAT CONFLICT. 



-♦-♦-♦- 



CHAPTER I. 

THE OPPOSING POWERS IN THE CONFLICT. 

And then shall that Wicked be Revealed, whom the 
Lord shall Consume with the Spirit of his Mouth, 
AND shall Destroy with the Brightness of his 
Coming. — 2 Thess. ii, 8. 

AN infidel, who was wont to ridicule 
the Bible as a tissue of cunningly 
devised fables, dreamed one night that 
he was weighed in the balances : in one 
scale was the Bible, and he in the other, 
and the Bible outweighed him. 

The politico-religious system, Roman- 
ism, is being weighed in the balances. It 
is in one scale ; the Bible, the word of 
God, in the other. The passage of 
Scripture at the head of this chapter 



14 The Great Conflict, 

intimates that Rome will not only be out- 
weighed and found wanting, but utterly 
consumed by the Spirit of his mouth, 
and destroyed by the brightness of his 
coming. 

I have assumed in the above remark 
that the " Wicked," or the Lawless 
One, as it might be rendered from the 
Greek in the passage, is Roman Ca- 
tholicism, which I propose to prove be- 
fore I have done with the subject ; that 
the Bible, or the revealed word and Gos- 
pel of God, is intended by the term, 
" Spirit of his mouth ;" and by the " bright- 
ness of his coming," that word and Gos- 
pel illumined by the effective agency of 
the Holy Ghost. That is to consume 
Romanism. We have brought into view 
two antagonistic principles, or rather 
their incarnations in two antagonistic 
powers, both determined on and strug- 
gling for universal empire. Nothing 
less is the fixed purpose of each. The 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 15 

one, "by the manifestation of the truth 
to every man's conscience in the sight 
of God," seeks for a willing, cheerful sub- 
jection, by, in, and over the hearts of all 
— a reign of righteousness, and peace, 
and good-will, a universal, individual 
self-government, under the law of Christ 
the King. 

The foundation and efficient principle 
of the other, is unquestioning, implicit 
obedience to a superior ; a government 
by force, or fraud, or high-sounding as- 
sumptions ; a power " whose coming is 
after [or according to] the working of 
Satan, with all power, and signs, and 
lying wonders," or deceptive prodigies, 
" and with all deceivableness of unright- 
eousness in them that perish." 

The foundation principle of the one is 
implicit faith in the infinite God and 
obedience to his law. 

That of the other is the devil's coun- 
terfeit of a true faith, substituting for 



i6 The Great Conflict, 

the " image and superscription," or sig- 
nature and seal of God, that of finite, 
fallible man, the Pope, the episcopacy, 
or the general of the Jesuits. 

The one elevates the governed to 
their proper manhood, " kings and priests 
unto God and the Lamb." The other 
dwarfs and belittles the individual man- 
hood of its subjects, almost ignores their 
individuality, and masses them under an 
unmitigated tyranny over the reason, 
conscience, souls, and bodies of its de- 
luded vassals. 

This has been the great conflict 
for empire for more than twelve cen- 
turies. It is now at a dead-lock. If 
the Bible is diffused among the nations, 
its truths accepted, and its principles 
wrought by the Holy Ghost into all 
hearts, Rome perishes, and is found no 
more at all. 

If the Bible by any means can be kept 
back from the nations, or the minds of 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 1 7 

the people be diverted from it by a 
trashy, trivial, skeptical, or a pretentious 
scientist literature — substituting for sci- 
ence mere hypotheses, often little better 
than day dreams of fanciful brains — or 
its truths be obscured by any substitute 
for it, Rorne may hold on its way, and 
if she can destroy the book, Romanism 
may live and maintain its sway over its 
dark dominions. 

There is doubtless a kind of sincerity 
in the ruling classes of that system, such 
a sincerity as Paul had when he thought 
he ought to do many things contrary to 
Jesus of Nazareth. They doubtless do 
think it would be better for the world, 
certainly for themselves, to be under the 
universal sway of the infallible Pope ; 
and, for the perfect peace of that empire, 
that the Bible should be kept out of the 
hands of the common people, that they 
may all look to, and be taught by, the 
priesthood, the doctrines of Rome. 



1 8 The Great Conflict, 

With their views we cannot, therefore, 
so much blame them for their opposition 
to the Bible. 

There is another good ground for 
that opposition. The book contains a 
Daguerreotype likeness, a perfect de- 
scription of that system — its rise, its 
character, its triumphs, its reign, and its 
downfall. No fugitive from justice would 
like to meet in every place a paper con- 
taining his description and photograph ; 
we could not blame him for concealing, 
or burning, them if possible. 

PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY. 

We find in some of the later prophets 
the system delineated with wonderful 
accuracy. But there has been so many 
diverse, and even contradictory, inter- 
pretations of prophecy, (even Rome has 
her interpreters and interpretations,) 
that it may seem like entering " dream- 
land" to refer to the word of prophecy 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 19 

in proof of any thing. But has there 
not been a somewhat general mistake 
among interpreters of prophecy, founded 
on an erroneous principle of interpre- 
tation ? 

The prophets on the general subject 
of the Messiah and his kingdom, and his 
enemies, have delineated the conflict of 
principles ; the contests of spiritual pow- 
ers — Christ and Satan, as old John Bun- 
yan has it — for the possession of " the 
town of Mansoul ;" the conflict of the 
spirit in man and the Holy Spirit above 
him, on the one side, and the flesh, (the 
animal,) the world, and the devil on the 
other, in the individual — antagonisms 
that on a vast scale have involved in their 
sweep the whole of humanity. This con- 
flict of underlying principles in the spirit 
world has ever been cropping out here 
and there, and repeating itself over and 
over again in the facts of human history — 
individual, national, and universal. The 



20 The Great Conflict, 

war is pre-eminently a religious war — • 
the conflict of the ages — that has stirred 
the race from the beginning till now, 
and will till the consummation, till the 
true triumphs over the false. 

The true religion of the race is its 

FELLOWSHIP WITH THE FaTHER. It had 

two sides from the beginning, comple- 
ments of each other for the perfecting 
of its unity. Godward, it was a system 
of GRACE on the one side, and of law on 
the other ; manward, it was a system of 
FAITH on the one side, and of works, or 
obedience to law, on the other ; the per- 
fection of faith and law too. 

The great Leader, on the one side — 
the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, 
the Christ of the Christian — appears 
first in Eden, in his assumed incarna- 
tion, in the likeness of man, and walks 
and talks with Adam and Eve, to 
strengthen fellowship, and trust, and 
communion with him. 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 21 

Satan, the opponent, in his assumed 
incarnation — the sly, wily, and then 
probably beautiful and fascinating ser- 
pent — appears in the same Eden, and 
from that incarnation gets his name and 
memorial through all generations : " The 
Old Serpent — the devil and Satan." He 
makes his first attack and gains his first 
victory on the weak side, the legal side, 
of religion ; and has carried on the same 
tactics ever since, as the history of the 
worlds religions abundantly shows. 
They are all, save one, the true Chris- 
tianity, but a combined apostasy from 
the faith, with the legal element or re- 
liance on vain works as the warp and 
woof of the whole. But his victory there 
was only his defeat, as ever since ; for 
while Adam was perfect, he was not 
PERFECTED, till through the knowledge of 
good and evil he came to a higher fel- 
lowship through a humbler, stronger 
faith. 



22 The Great Conflict, 

THE OPENING HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT. 

" Now the serpent " — Satan's " chosen 
incarnation" — "was more subtile than 
any beast of the field which the Lord 
God had made ; and he said unto the 
woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not 
eat of every tree of the garden." " No," 
replies the woman, " he hasn't said any 
such thing. But ' we may eat ' of the 
fruit of the trees of the garden.' He 
has been wonderfully benevolent and 
kind, and given all that heart can wish, 
or nature require, * but of the fruit of the 
tree which is in the midst of the garden, 
God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, 
neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.' " 
In the LAW or prohibition he is benev- 
olent and kind too. " It is poison ; he 
has warned us against danger." " Aye," 
sneers the serpent, " God knows better ! 
* Ye shall not surely die : . . . but be as 
gods, knowing good and evil.' " By the 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 23 

subtle insinuation, doubt, the first doubt 
and distrust, is awakened in the womanly 
mind. Can it be that God, after all, in 
this command is not entirely sincere and 
frank, that he has any sinister or con- 
cealed motive toward us ? It was but a 
step from the doubt or weakened faith 
to the transgression of the law. Through 
FAITH — perfect confidence — the law is ful- 
filled and faith made perfect ; but never 
can faith be attained through the law. 
That access to the tree of life has been 
guarded ever since by the " double flam- 
ing sword." Faith comes now thro.ugh 
GRACE. The incarnated antichrists ever 
since have been apostacies from the 
faith — falls from grace to the law ; and 
the conflict has been the efforts to scale 
the battlements of heaven to the citadel ; 
the tree of life, without Christ, in spite 
of Christ, in opposition to Christ, and in 
the strife has crucified Christ. The 
masterpiece of Satan in this warfare has 



24 The Great Conflict, 

been the great apostacy from the Chris- 
tian Church, pre-eminently The Anti- 
christ. 

The patriarchs and prophets through 
different ages, in their inspirations, have 
been let up into the visions of the great 
King, the Conqueror, to take a survey 
of the whole field of strife through the 
ages. Very dim indeed most of the vis- 
ions were, seldom entering into details 
of delineation, only glimpses in totality 
of the same vast field of conflict, in 
heaven and on earth — in spirits and in 
nature — in the spirits of fallen man, and 
the whole creation in sympathy, under 
the curse. They have been permitted 
to see so much of the plan of the grand 
campaign as was necessary for the guid- 
ance of the sacramental host of God's 
elect on that field of strife. 

The interpreter uninspired, with little 
or no sympathy with the Hebrew proph- 
ets, has seen in, or near his own age, 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 25 

detached skirmishes, or even hard-fought 
battles, but indecisive in the results or 
final consummation of the campaign, and 
has written them down as the fulfillment 
of the prophetic vision. They were in 
the vision, perhaps, but too small for 
notice or description. The interpreter 
has confined himself too much to the 
phenomena — detached historic events — 
and lost sight too much of the underly- 
ing principles or causes of the conflict. 

Even in the phenomena — the earthly 
history of the strife — the prophet has 
been like a traveler lifted to some 
mountain height to see the history 
through ages, as a vast mountain range 
casting its profile for hundreds of miles 
along the sky. The interpreter is often, 
like the same traveler, so near the range 
that he has lost sight of all except one 
peak, that fills his vision. He writes it 
down as the prophet's vision, when it 
was hardly an infinitesimal point in the 



26 The Great Conflict, 

vision. So another at another point 
writes out his interpretation. Hence 
the endless variety and confusion of 
interpretations; and many turn away 
from the " sure word of prophecy," as the 
most uncertain of all uncertainties. 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 27 



CHAPTER II. 

THE KEY TO RIGHT INTERPRETATION. 

IT seems to me that the very first 
prophecy ever uttered, and that not 
through a prophet, but by Jehovah 
himself, in saddened Eden, is the key to 
all general prophecy : " And I will put 
enmity between thee and the woman, 
and between thy seed and her seed ; it 
shall bruise thy head, and thou shall 
bruise his heel." I say general proph- 
ecy ; for particular prophecies relative to 
individuals, or single national events, 
often had little bearing on the great 
conflict, and the fulfillment, sometimes 
little more than the prophet's commis- 
sion. The visions of the earlier patri- 
archs and prophets under the old dis- 
pensation are filled with the Messiah, 
his advent and mission, his humiliation 



28 The Great Conflict, 

cind sufferings, his conflicts and triumph, 
the redemption wrought out by him 
through faith alone in his name ; in the 
struggle with the opposing principle of 
self-salvation by the deeds of the law, 
always and ever involving in itself the 
spirit of Antichrist. It becomes incar- 
nated finally in the Levitical priesthood 
and Jewish Sanhedrim — an apostacy 
from God's own institution — the first 
organized, incarnate Antichrist. It be- 
came of its father, the devil and Satan, 
and crucified the Lord of glory. 

THE VISIONS OF THE EARLIER PROPHETS. 

Any one who will carefully compare 
these visions of successive patriarchs and 
prophets, will be struck with their won- 
derful similarity ; with the fact that they 
were evidently visions of the same thing: 
the Messiah, his works, his conflicts, his 
glory. The plaintive moans of Job, of 
David, of Isaiah, in their depths of grief 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 29 

and sympathy with each other, poured 
forth In the deep rich tones of Hebrew- 
poetry, seem but the echoes back on the 
ages from the cross of, in the prophetic 
visions, the ever-present Man of Sor- 
rows — the crucified. These ancient 
saints and prophets were God's own il- 
lustrations of a true religion of faith, 
unsullied by, but brightened under trials, 
so brought into sympathy with the great 
central illustration — the Divine, immac- 
ulate God-man tempted, rejected, cruci- 
fied, yet without sin. 

Jeremiah seems to have been so over- 
borne with the calamities of his nation 
as seldom to rise above them, but to see 
something of the moral influence of the 
captivity on the nation and on the 
world, and the reformation and restora- 
tion after seventy years. Isaiah's visions 
are often full and glowing in the future 
glories of Messiah's kingdom, but he 
seems to have seen little of its conflicts 



30 The Great Conflict, 

after his resurrection. The visions of 
some of the prophets more clear than of 
others, brightening generally with suc- 
cessive prophets, a gradual unfolding of 
revelation, till Daniel fixes the precise 
time of Messiah's appearing and " cut- 
ting off, but not for himself" 

This prediction is so remarkable that 
I quote it, with Dr. Prideauxs note on 
it, (Dan. ix, 24-26:) "Seventy weeks 
are determined upon thy people, and 
upon thy holy city, to finish the trans- 
gression, and to make an end of sins, 
and to make reconciliation for iniquity, 
and to bring in everlasting righteous- 
ness, and to seal up the vision and 
prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. 
Know therefore and understand, that 
from the going forth of the command- 
ment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem 
unto the Messiah, the Prince, shall be 
SEVEN weeks and threescore and tv/o 
weeks : the street shall be built again, 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 31 

and the wall, even in troublous times. 
And after threescore and two weeks 
shall Messiah be cut off, but not for him- 
self ; and the people of the prince that 
shall come, shall destroy the city and 
the sanctuary, and the end thereof shall 
be with a flood, and unto the end of the 
war desolations are determined." — Ga- 
brieVs explanation of the vision. 

" The commencement of the whole 
period of seventy weeks, or four hun- 
dred and ninety days, or (a day for a 
year) four hundred and ninety years 
being reckoned from the seventh year 
of Artaxerxes, (Ezra vii, 11 ;) when the 
walls of Jerusalem were built, and its 
inhabitants restored to its ancient laws, 
falls upon the four hundred and fifty- 
seventh year before the Christian era. 
To four hundred and fifty-seven yoars 
before the birth of Christ add twenty-six 
years after his birth, and it makes four 
hundred and eighty-three years, (or the 



32 The Great Conflict, 

SIXTY-NINE weeks of four hundred and 
eighty-three days,) which brings us to 
the year of John the Baptist's preaching 
of the advent of the Messiah. Add one 
week of seven days, or seven years, and 
it brings us to the thirty-third year of 
our Lord, the year of his crucifixion." — 
Prideaux, 

He came at the precise time predicted ; 
yet bHnded Israel, with this prophecy In 
their hands acknowledged to be from 
God, have been waiting these eighteen 
HUNDRED years for their Messiah ! To 
all this is added the clear prediction, in 
the same passage, of the destruction of 
Jerusalem by the Romans, and the dis- 
persion of the Jews among all nations ; 
the end of the Levitical priesthood and 
the altar sacrifices ; the signal vengeance 
on the first Antichrist for the rejection 
and crucifixion of Christ. 

While the earlier prophets seem to 
have seen little of the conflicts after the 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 2)Z 

ascension, Ezekiel and Daniel in Babylon, 
in the midst of the captivity, with the 
visions of the near approach of the deliv- 
erance, and the overthrow of Israel's op- 
pressor, the Babylonian Empire, seem to 
have had foreshadowed to them in the 
midst of these stirring events the visions 
of the far-off conflict of the Church. 
Ezeklel's visions of Gog and Magog ; of 
the symbolic temple ; of the waters issu- 
ing out from under the eastern gate till 
it is a river to swim In ; of the trees on 
either side, with the leaves for healing 
of bruises, are remarkably like the visions 
of John on Patmos of Gog and Magog ; 
of the New Jerusalem ; of the River of 
Life ; of the trees on either bank, whose 
leaves are for the healing of the nations. 
They seem in the descriptions like two 
artists, with a perfect unity of design, 
engaged on the same picture ; the last, 
in more vivid colors, bringing it out into 
a clearer and fuller light 



34 The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER III. 

THE LAST ANTICHRIST OF THE PROPHETS. 

UNDER the guidance of the gen- 
eral principles unfolded in the 
preceding chapter, let us look for the 
Antichrist, or apostasy from the Chris- 
tian Church, of the prophets, and then 
at history, to see if Roman Catholicism, 
or the Papacy, is that Antichrist. 

It seems to me that the wonderful 
visions of Daniel, with the clear expla- 
nation of them by the angel Gabriel, 
and the historic fulfillment of them in 
part, furnish a key to the more wonder- 
ful visions of John on the island Patmos. 

Daniel was in Babylon, in the captiv- 
ity, near six hundred years before Christ. 
Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, 
has a remarkable dream five hundred 
and seventy years before Christ, but 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 35 

could not remember or recall it in the 
morning. In his intense and restless 
anxiety to know the dream and its inter- 
pretation, he calls all the wise men of 
Babylon together, and offers rich re- 
wards for the dream and its interpreta- 
tion, or their death if it is not made 
known to him. This ultimately brings 
the captive Jew into notice, and finally 
makes Daniel the prime minister of the 
empire ; and, what was much more, 
brings Daniel's God, the God of heaven, 
to the knowledge of the monarch and 
his subjects. 

THE DREAM. 

God reveals to Daniel, in a night 
vision, the dream and the interpreta- 
tion, which he presents to the king : 

" Thou, O king, sawest and beheld a 
great image, whose brightness was ex- 
cellent, and the form thereof was terri- 
ble. This image's head was of fine gold, 



36 The Great Conflict, 

his breast and arms of silver, his belly 
and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, 
his feet part of iron and part of clay. 
Thou sawest till that a stone was cut 
out of the mountain without hands, 
which smote the image on the feet that 
were of iron and clay and break them to 
pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the 
brass, the silver, and the gold broken to 
pieces together, and became like the 
chaff of the summer threshing floor ; 
and the winds of heaven carried them 
away that no place was found for them : 
and the stone that smote them became 
a great mountain and filled the whole 
earth." " This is the dream." 

THE INTERPRETATION. 

The dream is interpreted to mean the 
four great empires : the Babylonian, " the 
head of gold ;" the Medo-Persian, " the 
breasts and arms of silver;" the Mace- 
donian or Grecian, " the belly and thighs 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 2)7 

of brass ;" the Roman, " the legs of 
iron," with the lesser kingdoms of Eu- 
rope into which that empire was broken, 
" the feet and toes, part of iron and part 
of clay." 

It has already covered twenty-four 
hundred and forty-two years of history, 
fulfilling the prophecy with wonderful 
accuracy to the present time, 1874. 

DANIEL'S VISION. 

Twenty-nine years after the dream 
of Nebuchadnezzar, according to the 
chronology of some, five hundred and 
forty-one years before Christ, in the first 
year of the reign* of Belshazzar, Daniel 
had another vision, giving another sym- 
bolical representation of the same range 
of history. " Four great beasts came 
up from the sea, diverse one from an- 
other." " The first was like a lion, and 
had eagle's wings ; I beheld till the 
wings thereof were plucked, . . . and it 



38 The Great Conflict, 

was made to stand upon the feet as a 
man." Babylon again, but the empire 
in a decline; two years afterward Baby- 
lon was taken by the Medes and Per- 
sians. " And the second like to a bear, 
. . . and it had three ribs in the mouth 
of it between the teeth of it." The Medo- 
Persian again. " The third was like a 
leopard which had upon its back four 
wings of a fowl ; the beast had also four 
heads." The Grecian empire again, un- 
der the four generals of Alexander the 
Great, after his death. " After this I 
saw in the night visions, and beheld a 
fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and 
strong exceedingly ; and it had great 
iron teeth ; it devoured and brake in 
pieces and stamped the residue with the 
feet of it ; and it was diverse from all the 
beasts that were before it ; and it had 
ten horns. I considered the horns, and 
behold there came up among them 
another little horn, before whom there 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 39 

were three of the first horns plucked up 
by the roots ; and behold in this horn 
were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a 
mouth speaking great things." The 
Roman empire again, with its division 
into the kingdoms of Europe, the ten 
horns answering to the ten toes of the 
image. Much effort has been made to 
find precisely these ten kingdoms, much 
learning displayed, with considerable 
variety of interpretation. The map of 
Europe has changed every century since 
the breaking up of the Roman Empire. 
It seems to me that the number ten is 
used because it was natural for the Im- 
age to have ten toes. You cannot make 
a picture or symbol enter Into the pre* 
else particulars of a written description. 
It was broken up into smaller kingdoms ; 
ten, or more or less of them at different 
times. 

But what filled Daniel with the great- 
est astonishment was the little horn. 



40 The Great Conflict, 

It was a new vision of the future ; none 
of the preceding prophets had seen it 
before, certainly not with any distinct- 
ness of view. " Then I would know the 
truth," says Daniel, " of the fourth beast, 
. . . and of the ten horns that were in 
his head, and of the other which came 
up, and before whom three fell ; even of 
the horn that had eyes, and a mouth that 
spake very great things, whose look was 
more stout than his fellows." " And I 
beheld, and the same horn made war 
with the saints, and prevailed against 
them, until the ancient of days came 
(the permanent or enduring of days — 
the eternal) and judgment was given to 
the saints of the Most High, and the 
time came that the saints possessed the 
kingdom." Then comes the angel's ex- 
planation of the vision : " Thus," he said, 
" the beast shall be the fourth kingdom 
upon earth, which shall be diverse from 
all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 41 

earth, and shall tread it down, and break 
it in pieces. And the ten horns out of 
this kingdom are ten kings, (or king- 
doms,) that shall arise, and another shall 
rise after them ; and he shall be diverse 
from the first, and he shall subdue three 
kings. And he shall speak great words 
against the Most High, and shall wear 
out the saints of the Most High, and 
think to change times and laws ; and 
they shall be given into his hand until a 
time and times and the dividing of times, 
(1,260 years.) But the judgment shall 
sit, and they shall take away his domin- 
ion to consume and to destroy it unto 
the end. And the kingdom and domin- 
ion and the greatness of the kingdom 
under the whole heaven shall be given 
to the people of the saints of the Most 
High, whose kingdom is an everlasting 
kingdom, and all dominions shall serve 
and obey him." 

Daniel had said in the closing part of 



42 The Great Conflict, 

his vision : " I beheld till the thrones 
were cast down, (or set in haste for the 
judges in the impending judgment,) and 
the ancient of days (the Eternal) did sit, 
whose garment was white as snow, and 
the hair of his head like pure wool ; his 
throne was like the fiery flame, and his 
wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream 
issued and came forth from before him : 
thousand thousands ministered unto 
him, and ten thousand times ten thou- 
sand stood before ; the judgment was 
set, and the books were opened." A 
final settlement with, and overthrow of, 
the great enemy by the breath of his 
mouth, and the brightness of his glory. 
" I beheld then because of the voice of 
the great words which the horn spake ; 
I beheld even till the beast was slain and 
his body destroyed, and given to the 
burning flame." " I saw in the night 
visions, and behold, one like the Son of 
man came with the clouds of heaven. 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 43 

and came to the Ancient of days, and 
they brought him near before him." 
The Jehovah of Israel, the Incarnate 
One, the Conqueror, glorified as the 
Eternal Son of God, assuming his right 
to reign as God. " And there was given 
him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, 
that all people, nations, and languages 
should serve him ; his dominion is an 
everlasting dominion which shall not 
pass away, and his kingdom that which 
shall not be destroyed." 

How very like these descriptions of 
Daniel to those of John of the same per- 
sonage in the visions of Patmos ! 



44 The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT PROPHECIES OF 
THE ANTICHRIST. 

FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE 
years after the vision of Daniel, 
related in the preceding chapter, when 
the THREE BEASTS of the vision had 
passed into history — " had their domin- 
ion taken away, though their lives were 
prolonged for a season and time " — under 
the reign of the fourth beast, and within 
little more than three hundred years of 
the breaking of the Roman Empire into 
the kingdoms of the ten horns, or ten 
TOES of the great image of Nebuchad- 
nezzar's dream, in the fifty-second 
year of the Christian era, Paul writes to 
the Thessalonians : " Let no man de- 
ceive you by any means : for that day 
shall not come, (the day of the return, or 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 45 

coming of Christ and of the end of the 
world, as some taught,) except there 
come a falling away first, and that Man 
of Sin be revealed, the Son of Perdition, 
who opposeth and exalteth himself above 
all that is called God, or that is wor- 
shiped ; so that he as God sitteth in the 
temple of God, showing himself that he 
is God. Remember ye not, that, when I 
was yet with you, I told you these 
things ? And now ye know what with- 
holdeth (or holdeth back, or hindereth) 
that he might be revealed in his time. 
For the mystery of iniquity doth already 
work : only he who now letteth will let 
(or hinder) until he be taken out of the 
way. And then shall that Wicked (law- 
less one) be revealed, whom the Lord 
shall consume with the spirit of his 
mouth, and shall destroy with the bright- 
ness of his coming : even hifyi whose 
coming is after the working of Satan 
with all power and signs and lying won- 



46 The Great Conflict. 

ders, and with all deceivableness of 
unrighteousness in them that perish ; 
because they receive not the love of 
the truth, that they might be saved. 
2 Thess. ii, 3-10. 

Five years afterward, in the year 57 
or 58, Paul writes to Timothy: "Now 
the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in 
the latter times some shall depart from 
the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, 
and doctrines of devils ; speaking lies in 
hypocrisy ; having their conscience seared 
with a hot iron ; forbidding to marry, 
and commanding to abstain from meats, 
which God hath created to be received 
with thanksgiving of them which believe 
and know the truth/' i Tim. iv, 1-3. 

What had Paul " told the Thessaloni- 
ans when he was with them ? " The 
great apostasy, the terrible Antichrist, 
seems to have been a subject well un- 
derstood among the early Christians, 
though little was written, and that 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 47 

knowledge handed down orally for two 
or three centuries. The early fathers in 
the Church seem to have well under- 
stood what prevented or held back the 
revelation of Antichrist. Tertullian, who 
wrote very early in the third century 
in defense of the Christians against the 
charge that they were unconcerned for 
the safety of the Roman emperor, says : 
" We are under a particular necessity of 
praying for the emperors, and for the 
continued state of the empire, because 
we know that the dreadful power which 
hangs over the whole world, and the 
conclusion of the age, which threatens 
the most horrible evils, is retarded or 
delayed by the time appointed for the 
continuance of the Roman Empire. This 
is what we would not experience, and 
while we pray it may be deferred, we 
hereby show our good will to the perpe- 
tuity of the Roman State." The same 
writer, in his comments on the passage 



48 The Great Conflict, 

in Paul's epistle, " Until he be taken out 
of the way," says : " Who but the Roman 
Empire, which being dispersed into ten 
of kings, shall introduce Antichrist ? " 

Chrysostom, who wrote early in the 
FIFTH century, about fifty years before 
the breaking up of the Empire, comment- 
ing on the same passage, says : " When 
the Roman Empire shall be taken out 
of the way, then shall the Man of Sin 
come ; when that shall be overthrown, 
he shall invade the empire and attempt 
the rule both of man and God." 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 49 



CHAPTER V. 

THE VISIONS OF ST. JOHN. 

ABOUT the year 96, twenty-six years 
after the destruction of Jerusalem, 
and three hundred and eighty years before 
the breaking up of the Western Roman 
Empire, or change in the reign of the 
FOURTH BEAST of Daniel's vision to the 
reign of the ten horns and of the little 
horn ; and six hundred and thirty-seven 
years after that vision, John has the 
remarkable vision or revelation on the 
Island of Patmos. The symbolical rep- 
resentations in this vision are so grand, 
and the coming history of the Church 
and its opposing powers, involving the 
whole race of earth down to the consum- 
mation, unfolded in the vision, is so vast, 
that it is impossible to cramp it, as some 

interpreters have attempted, into a pre- 
4 



50 The Great Conflict, 

diction of the destruction of Jerusalem, 
on the weak chronological argument 
that it was delivered before that event, 
or the weaker one, that it was retro- 
spective. Prophecy never goes back on 
history to symbolize or dimly shadow 
that which had already been plainly 
written out ; nor can it be cramped into 
the commotions and final destruction of 
the Roman Empire. It takes up the 
visions of Daniel at the point where 
they had already become history, and 
unfolds in more minute detail and 
brighter coloring the same subject of 
the visions, both of Daniel and John, 
down to the end. The grand theme, 
and great wonder of both prophets, is 
the struggle of the Little Horn and the 
saints of the Most High for empire. 

The stirring events of the Revelator's 
times did but foreshadow the coming 
conflict. Satan, in the first incarnate 
Antichrist, had gained another great 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 5 1 

victory. Christ had been crucified, dead, 
and buried, but it turned to a terrible 
defeat. The Conqueror comes up from 
the grave and ascends to the throne of 
the " Ancient of days : that incarnate 
Antichrist had been signally overthrown 
in the terrible doom of Jerusalem, and 
the nation scattered among all nations, 
as a standing monument through the 
ages of Messiah's victory." What next ? 
What is the Church to look for in the 
future 1 At that, point, while the oppos- 
ing hosts are gathering for a new con- 
test ; for the guidance and support of 
God's host on that field, the visions of 
Patmos unfold the vicissitudes of that 
coming conflict and the final triumph of 
the King and his saints. 

MEANING OF THE SYMBOLS IN THE VISION. 

John is commanded to write "the 

THINGS WHICH ARE, AND THE THINGS 
WHICH SHALL BE HEREAFTER." 



52 The Great Conflict, 

Daniel's fourth beast, the Roman 
Civil Government, comes up to view as 
then existing — the thing that is ; but it 
has a future, too, that must be presented 
under a similar, but a more full and 
enlarged, symbol — that of "the first 
BEAST " of the Revelation, " with seven 
heads and ten horns, (the same number 
of Daniel's fourth beast,) and upon his 
horns ten crowns." This symbol in- 
cludes the things which are and which 
shall be hereafter. The messages for 
the seven Churches of Asia also revealed 
to him the then condition of those 
Churches, and their future extinction if 
they did not resist the already incipient 
workings of "the great Apostasy" among 
them. It only marks the position of 
the prophet in history, from which, un- 
der Divine illumination, he sketches 
that wonderful historical painting of the 
future. 

Let us bring into view the symbols, 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 53 

or rather the powers symbolized, in this 
wonderful vision, not precisely in the 
order in which they are related, but in 
the order or array of battle. We have 
still the same two spiritual powers ar- 
rayed in the coming conflict, the Son of 
God on the one side, '' and Satan, the 
old serpent, and the devil " on the other, 
with their armies, the true Church, and 
the Apostasy, or false Church, and the 
world. 

The symbolical representations of the 
spiritual power, on one side, are : First, 
" One like unto the Son of man, clothed 
with a garment down to the foot, and 
girt about the paps with ^a golden girdle. 
His head and his hairs were white like 
wool, as white as snow ; and his eyes 
were as a flame of fire ; and his feet like 
unto fine brass, as if they were burned 
in a furnace ; and his voice as the sound 
of many waters. And he had in his 
right hand seven stars ; and out of his 



54 The Great Conflict, 

mouth went a sharp two-edged sword ; 
and his countenance was as the sun shin- 
eth In his strength." " And when I saw 
him," says the Revelator, " I fell at his 
feet as one dead." The symbol blends 
the human and Divine in Jesus glorified. 
How similar the descriptions, both of 
Daniel and John, of the same- person- 
age ! and how similar the effect of the 
vision on each ! 

The second symbol of the same per- 
sonage is : " And I beheld a throne was 
set in heaven, and One sat upon the 
throne ; and he that sat was to look upon 
like a jasper and a sardine stone ; and 
there was a rarnbow round about the 
throne, in sight like unto an emerald." 
Jesus in his Godhead glorified ; as Dan- 
iel has it, "One like unto the Son of 
man coming to the Ancient of days." 

The third, or threefold symbol : " He 
is the LION of the tribe of Judah; the 
ROOT of David ; the Lamb as it had been 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 55 

slain." The only one "worthy," or that 
had power, "to open the book or to look 
thereon." Jesus in his manhood, in his 
humiliation, as Redeemer and revealer 
of God to man.' 

The fourth symbol : " He is the Faith- 
ful and True on a white horse ; his eyes 
as a flame of fire, and on his head many 
crowns ;" " clothed in a vesture dipped 
in blood ; and his name is called the 
Word of God." Jesus in the conflict, 
through his own blood, leading his 
armies to victory. 

SYMBOLS OF THE CHURCH. 

His armies, the sacramental hosts, the 
true Church, is presented under four dif- 
ferent symbols. 

First. " The two witnesses, clothed 
in sackcloth, prophesying a thousand two 
hundred aud threescore days]^ (one thou- 
sand two hundred and sixty years.) 

Second. " A W031AN clothed with the 



56 The Great Conflict, 

sun;" shod with the moon, "the moon 
was under her feet ;" " crowned with 
twelve stars," enrobed in God's own glo- 
rious creations ; " but travailing in birth, 
and pained to be delivered ;" her child 
caught up into heaven ; she winged to 
fly into the wilderness, to be protected 
from the power of the great red dragon, 
the same one thousand two hundred and 
sixty years. 

Third. " The four and twenty eld- 
ers clothed with white raiment, and on 
their heads. crowns of gold:" "and the 
four living creatures (badly translated 
beasts in our version) full of eyes before 
and behind;" "each had six wings," 
" full of eyes within." The Church vic- 
torious and triumphant. 

Fourth. "The new Jerusalem com- 
ing down from God out of heaven as a 
bride adorned for her husband." This 
symbol is the climax of a series of like 
symbols running through all the proph- 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 57 

ets : from the tabernacle, made after a 
precise pattern, in the wilderness ; the 
TEMPLE in Jerusalem; the temple of 
Ezekiel's vision, to the perfection — the 
NEW Jerusalem of John's vision. The 
successive developments of these sym- 
bolical representations contain a minia- 
ture history of the Church. It is the 
Church nomadic in the wilderness ; the 
Church settled in the land of promise, 
but under carnal ordinances ; the Church 
in captivity in Babylon, but there wield- 
ing a more mighty moral and spiritual 
power over the nations than ever before ; 
and the Church triumphant over all the 
earth. " All nations walking in her light." 
There Is another symbol, chap, xi, i, 2, 
that seems to include both the true 
Church and the Apostasy, so intimately 
connected, that the developing Apostasy 
into a distinct organization seems yet 
but the outer court of the true Church. 
" And there was given me a reed like 



58 The Great Conflict, 

unto a rod ; and the angel stood, saying, 
Rise, and measure the temple of God, 
and the altar, and them that worship 
therein. But the court which is without 
the temple leave out, and measure it not ; 
for it is given unto the Gentiles : and the 
holy city [the true Church] shall they 
tread under foot forty and two months." 
The same twelve hundred and sixty years. 

SYMBOL OF THE OPPOSING POWER. 

The spiritual power underlying all its 
incarnations — the chief in this conflict 
with the Son of God — is " the Old Ser- 
pent, the devil and Satan." The sym- 
bolical representation of him is "The 
Great Red Dragon, having seven heads 
and ten horns, and seven crowns upon 
his heads ; and his tail drew the third 
part of the stars of heaven, and did cast 
them to the earth." What a symbol ! 
If an artist wished to characterize good- 
ness, benevolence, meekness, wisdom, 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 59 

strength, all the virtues, he would need 
to paint but one head and face ; but if 
he would characterize cunning, craft, ma- 
liciousness, malice, revenge, malignity, 
all the evil passions of which a spirit is 
capable, and then blend the spirit with 
the animal, and bring out selfishness, 
gluttony, brutality, beastliness, all the 
possible evil passions of the two natures 
combined, he would need to paint seven 
heads and ten horns to delineate the 
whole : then add to it the slimy body 
of a vast snake with a tail in its malig- 
nant wrigglings and writhings casting 
down many great men, and even great 
lights of the Church, to the earth. 

If there is such awful and tremendous 
force in the symbol, what must be the 
power of the creature symbolized? He 
dared in Eden to give the Son of God 
the lie. He is "red " with the blood of 
the nations shed in mutual slaughter. 
He has made the history of the race 



6o The Great Conflict, 

under God's government, an impenetra- 
ble mystery. He reigned in God's own 
Jewish Church "an accuser of the breth- 
ren," a persecutor of the small number of 
the faithful prophets and saints who did 
believe in the Son of God, in the Divin- 
ity of the Messiah, and hurried on that 
Church to the rejection and crucifixion 
of Christ. He has ever been the op- 
poser of the Sonship of the Messiah, of 
the Divinity of Jesus, though sometimes, 
in view of the retribution," believing and 
trembling." 

But in that imagined victory he was 
cast out of heaven — the Church. The 
resurrection and ascension made the 
divinity and power of Jesus so over- 
whelmingly clear and convincing, that 
multitudes, even of his crucifiers, believed 
on him : perhaps the " sealed hundred 
and forty and four thousand " and a 
great " host of the nations that no man 
can number." 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 6i 

The Christian Church is founded on 
that rock. The true saints cannot be 
shaken from it. Satan can no longer 
control the Church or abide in it ; he is 
cast out of heaven down to the earth, 
" and has come down with great wrath, 
for his time is short." 

He cannot crucify Christ again, but 
he can make war with his seed, and shed 
the blood of the saints ; he must have 
his incarnation an organized power. He 
cannot rule the true Church again, or 
draw it over to his work, but he can 
draw an apostasy out of it, and make a 
counterfeit Church to deceive the na- 
tions. This visible incarnation of Sa- 
tan's forces on earth was the burden of 
the Revelator's vision. 

THE SYMBOLS OF THE APOSTASY. 

The first symbol is " The false 
PROPHET, that wrought miracles before 
the Beast, with which he deceived them 



62 The Great Conflict. 

that had received the mark of the Beast, 
and them that worshiped his Image." 
This is the power pitted against the 
" Two Witnesses." It does not seem to 
me that this symbol has much to do with 
Mohammedanism. It is pre-eminently a 
characteristic of the Papacy, and yet 
may be even wider than that in its sig- 
nificancy, including any thing or organ- 
ization seeming to be religious, yet 
without the root of the matter, the real 
foundation principle of Christianity. 

The second symbol is the two-horned 
LAMB coming up out of the earth. He 
has an earthly origin, and is a beast, 
though a lamb in appearance, and meek- 
ness, and gentleness, yet he has "two 
horns," "and speaks as a dragon." " He 
exercises all the power of the first beast, 
and causeth all the earth, and all that 
dwell therein, to worship (bow down to) 
the first beast whose deadly wound was 
healed ; and he doeth great wonders, so 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. G'^ 

that he maketh fire come down from 
heaven, in the sight of men, and de- 
ceiveth them that dwell on the earth by 
means of these miracles." He causes an 
image to be made of the first beast, and 
has power to give life to the image. He 
adds a spiritual or ecclesiastical power 
to an earthly government, and through 
that power brings the governments un- 
der his sway. Can the intent of this 
symbol or its application be mistaken ? 
Could the origin of the temporal power 
of the Papacy, or the blending of the 
spiritual with the temporal in the gov- 
ernment of the nations, be more clearly 
symbolized? It is only an amplification 
or enlargement of Daniel's vision of the 
Little Horn, representing the same pe- 
culiar features of the same power. 

In connection with this symbol I can- 
not forbear to notice a peculiarity in 
the angel's explanation to John of the 
meaning of the symbol of the woman 



64 The Great Conflict, 

and the beast that carried her, especially 

of the " BEAST THAT WAS, AND IS NOT, AND 

YET IS." " The seven heads are seven 
mountains, on which the woman sitteth, 
and are seven kings," or kingdoms, as it 
should be rendered, or forms of civil gov- 
ernment ; " five are fallen, and one is, and 
the other is not yet come. . . , And the 
BEAST that was, and is not, even he is the 
EIGHTH, and is of [out of] the seven, and 
goeth into perdition." Five forms of gov- 
ernment of Daniel's beast, or five heads of 
John's beast, had passed into history and 
passed away — kings ^ consuls, dictators, de- 
cemvirs, and military tribunes, John was 
under the sixth head, or imperial form, 
" ONE IS," " the other is not yet come" — the 
power of the ten horns. But what is the 
EIGHTH beast that comes up out of the 
seven, and " was, and is not, and yet is ? " 
The religious element, paganism, had 
always been a controlling power in the 
civil governments symbolized by the 



As ShadoiJOed by the Prophets, 65 

BEASTS in Daniel's vision. The pontifcx 
maximus was a controlling office in the 
whole history of the Roman Empire 
before John's day. Paganism was a 
false religion, and its control was by 
craft and deception and force ; an earthly 
beast-power in the government of men. 
After the crucifixion, resurrection, and 
ascension of the Son of God, and the 
diffusion and prevalence of Christianity, 
this power in the Roman Empire was 
greatly weakened, for a time, under the 
reign of Constantine the Great, almost 
annihilated, and this pagan persecuting 
power had ceased to annoy the Church, 
so that it might be said of this " beast- 
power " " it is not," and yet it is ; its ele- 
ments in a few centuries developed into 
the Papacy, a religious power, almost 
pagan, false, and earthly in all its princi- 
ples of control over men ; the eighth 
beast coming up out of, and of the beast- 
ly nature of the seven — the synonym and 



66 The Great Conflict, 

synchronism of the " two horned lamb" 
and the little horn of Daniels vision. 

The third symbol is the great whore, 
the woman, sitting on the scarlet col- 
ored beast, arrayed in purple and scarlet 
color, and decked with gold and precious 
stones and pearls, " having a golden cup 
in her hand full of abominations and 
filthiness of her fornication," " drunken 
with the blood of the saints," and of the 
" martyrs of Jesus." She is the pretended 
spouse of Christ, yet in the closest inti- 
macy with the potentates and kings of 
earth, adopting their principles of craft 
and force in the government of this 
world. In return and to that end, she is 
decked and ornamented by them with 
all earthly arts and accomplishments, to 
gain influence and power over the im- 
aginations and minds of men. It is a 
perfect contrast to the description of the 
true Bride, clothed in God's own gar- 
ments of nature, simplicity, and beauty. 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 67 

The fourth symbol is " Babylon the 
Great," "that great city which reign- 
eth over the kings of the earth." This 
symbol is so blended in the description 
with that of the woman, that there is no 
mistaking the fact that they both mean 
one and the same thing. 

All these symbols of the false or 
counterfeit Church give it an earthly 
and Satanic origin, on a religious prin- 
ciple indeed, but deceptive and antag- 
onistic to the principles at the founda- 
tion of the true Church of Christ. 

But THE Antichrist is not yet com- 
plete. This religious organization, or 
earthly incarnation, must have a sup- 
port more exclusively of earth and 
earthly ; and this earthly power or or- 
ganization, as its chief support, must 
also have its symbol. So we have a 
FIFTH SYMBOL. " Out of the sea," where 
Daniel's four beasts came from, " comes 
up the first beast" of John's vision, 



68 The Great Conflict, 

with " seven heads and ten horns, and 
upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his 
heads the names of blasphemy." The 
very heads and horns of the Old Ser- 
pent, but on the body of the beast, and 
crowned. 

" And the dragon gave him his power, 
and his seat, and great authority." Satan 
blended with the beast in human civil 
governments over the nations. The 
symbol is not that of the false Church, 
or the Apostasy, but of civil governments 
not founded on right, and justice, and 
GOOD WILL, but on might, and lawless 

AUTHORITY, and SELFISH, UNPRINCIPLED 

POWER, the BEAST-POWER of lawless self- 
ishness and brute force. It has not so 
much to do with the forms of human 
government as with their spirit or char- 
acter. A democracy may have more of 
the beast-nature and blind force in it than 
absolutism, or even military despotism. 
Such were the civil governments in 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 69 

the days of Daniel and of John, and such 
have they been to a greater or less de- 
gree down to this day. But the ten 
TOES of Nebuchadnezzar's image were 
part clay and part iron. Human rights, 
under law, began the struggle with law- 
less despotism in government, and the 
conflict has waged on through the ages, 
and will, till the Decalogue becomes the 
constitutional law of nations, and the 
people of the saints of the Most High 
rule over the earth. The rights of the 
people under law have become so potent 
under the long, long struggle, that not 
an ambitious mortal now — unless it be 
the infallible Pope or his blind votary — 
is so foolhardy as to dream of universal 
empire by craft or by might. The peo- 
ple have become a power, and, when 
fitted for it, will have the government. 

For a long time in the strife civil gov- 
ernments were the chief support of the 
Apostasy— in league with it, the armor- 



70 The Great Conflict, 

bearer of it. The little horn grew out 
of the head of the beast ; and so the 
Apostasy partook of the substance and 
nature of the beast, so close was the. 
alliance to make a full Antichrist. It 
has been the pet animal of the scarlet 
lady — the beast on which she rode 
through all the battles of the dark ages, 
and rides still. For even in this nine- 
teenth century, in this great republic, in 
this metropolitan city, she sits on the 
same beast under the head of indicted 
thieves, receiving for her vote-offerings 
millions on millions of dollars to deck 
herself, and to keep the beast in power 
to still steal for her support and luxury 
in her harlotry with the beast-powers 
and rulers of earth. 

In this symbol, or seven-headed beast 
— or rather in the history of it — is one 
peculiar characteristic or fact we cannot 
pass without notice. Says John : "And 
I saw one of his heads as it were 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 71 

wounded to death, and his deadly wound 
was healed." It was that which made 
" all the world wonder after the beast," 
and which the " second beast, the two 
horned lamb," helped to heal, and made 
so much of in the government by the 
"head that was wounded to death and 
did live." 

THE DEADLY WOUND HEALED. 

The breaking up of the Roman Em- 
pire under its imperial head, or form of 
government, after a dominion of more 
than twelve hundred years, and part of 
that time well-nigh universal, by the 
barbarian hordes from" the North, in 
A. D. 476, would seem to the world to be 
the death of empire, the end of all hu- 
man government, of order or civilization, 
a dissolution into anarchy and utter con- 
fusion ; but anon the same principle of 
organization, the same beast-power of 
government, appears in the " ten horns" 



72 The Great Conflict, 

of the same beast, till under Charle- 
magne, crowned A. D. 800, and soon 
reigning over nearly all the former 
Western Roman Empire, the deadly 
wound is fully healed. Not only that, 
but the ecclesiastical or spiritual power 
of Rome comes into the alliance, and 
soon gains the ascendency, and, with its 
Divine rights of kings and popes, makes 
an iron government, more potent, tyran- 
nical, and oppressive than any despot- 
ism the world had ever groaned under. 
What a fulfillment ! * 

* After I had completed the manuscript of the pres- 
ent volume, the recent very interesting, clear, and able 
volume of Professor Pond, D.D., of Bangor, " The Seals 
Opened ; or. Apocalypse Explained," fell into my 
hands. I was most agreeably surprised, and greatly 
strengthened, to find that what I had written, so nearly 
in outline coincides with his more thorough and schol- 
arly investigations of the Apocalypse, and more full de- 
scription of the fulfillment of the predictions, the only 
essential difference being : he makes the first beast of 
John's vision to symbolize the kingly or temporal power 
of Papal Rome, and the deadly wound of the head of the 
beast to be healed in the rise of that kingly power. The 



As Shadowed by the Prophets. 73 

In these symbols, these marvelous pro- 
phetic pictures, we have arrayed before 
us the powers and forces for the contest. 
Then the conflict opens in the opening 
of the seven seals, the sounding of the 
seven trumpets, and the pouring out of 
the seven vials. It seems to me that 
this is but a threefold representation of 
the great features and facts in the his- 
tory of the then impending struggle. 

Were you to describe a great battle, 
you would be obliged to describe the 
movements of the right wings of the 
contending armies, the left wings, the 
centers, and the final movements of the 
reserves, while together it is but one 
description of the whole battle. 

blasphemous characteristics given to the beast would 
seem to indicate that, but it seems to me that that beast 
includes the whole of the fourth beast of Daniel with the 
ten horns, all the civil powers under the sway of the ec- 
clesiastical or spiritual power of Rome, Of course that 
includes the temporal power of Rome, or the little horn 
of Daniel's vision. The Pope crowned Charlemagne, 
and so healed the deadly wound of one head of the beast. 



74 The Great Conflict, 

The first to the sixth seals do, indeed, 
bring into view more clearly the first 
pages or acts in the history of the con- 
flict ; such as the triumphs of the Gos- 
pel in the second and third centuries, 
and the reaction and pagan persecutions 
and commotions in the Roman Empire 
to the triumphs of Christianity under 
Constantine. But the seventh seal seems 
to include the whole of the seven trum- 
pets, and run through to the same con- 
summation with the seventh trumpet 
and the seventh seal. The first four 
trumpets and the first four vials pass 
over the same field of history, and are 
remarkably alike in description ; in both 
it is the sea^ the earth, the rivers, and 
fountains of water, and the sun, as the 
theaters of the acts or history, and the 
effects of the judgments very similar. 
The seventh vial brings out the consum- 
mation more clearly than the seventh 
seal or trumpet, but all run to the same 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, 75 

consummation, and the same with that 
of Daniel's vision. It does not seem to 
me that Mohammedanism is brought 
into view as a distinct opposing power 
of the Church. As matter of fact, it has 
never done the true Church much in- 
jury, but it has held the Papacy in 
check, and prevented its universal em- 
pire. The terrific Saracen and Turkish 
wars, and the duration of them, as the 
wrath of God on the race, are evidently 
brought into view in the fifth and sixth, 
or " first and second woe " trumpets, as 
the consumption of the Eastern Roman 
Empire. 

We have in the preceding pages only 
designed to give in brief a mere outline, 
or general view, of these prophetic pict- 
ures or symbols, without entering into 
particulars, or considering objections, or 
the great variety of interpretations of 
different expositors. We would lead 
the reader to the prophets themselves, 



76 The Great Conflict, 

to compare prophecy with prophecy, and 
then to study the history of their fulfill- 
ment, that he may become wiser in bib- 
lical knowledge than his teachers are. 

THE PROPHETIC MARKS OF ANTICHRIST. 

What are the marks or characteristics 
of Antichrist left by the prophets 7 

1. It is an APOSTASY growing up grad- 
ually out of the true Christian Church. 

2. The TIME of its appearing or incar- 
nation into a system. It grows up with, 
and in the time of, the ten horns of the 
fourth beast. 

3. It takes the place and assumes the 
POWER of the three horns, wears the 
TRIPLE CROWN, and exerciseth all the 
power of .the first beast, and reigneth 
over the kings of the earth. 

4. Its BLASPHEMOUS ASSUMPTIONS. " It 

sits in the temple of God, and speaks 
great words against the Most High," 
''and thinks to change times and laws," 



As Shadowed by the Prophets, "jy 

" forbidding to marry, and commanding 
to abstain from meats." 

5. It is the "MOTHER OF HARLOTS," 

" and abominations of the whole earth," 
" with signs and lying wonders, and all 
deceivableness of unrighteousness." 

6. "It WEARS OUT THE SAINTS of the 

Most High," " is drunken with the blood 
of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus." 
7. The instruments of its destruc- 
tion; hated by the horns of the same 
beast that has given its power to her 
and supported her. " They shall make 
her desolate and naked, and shall eat 
her flesh and burn her with fire." She 
is to be consumed finally and fully 
"by the Spirit of His mouth and the 
brightness of his revelation." 



yS The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE HISTORY OF ANTICHRIST, OR THE 
APOSTASY. 

ALL the marks left by the proph- 
ets, related In the previous chapter, 
do not, and cannot, apply to any organ- 
ized system or power that has ever ex- 
isted on earth, save one. They do not 
apply to Mohammedanism; that was not 
an apostasy from the Christian Church, 
and it never assumed the place of God 
in his temple. They do not apply to 
the Greek Church only as a branch of 
the Roman, for though an apostasy, it 
has never made such impudent assump- 
tions, nor has it ruled over the kings of 
the earth. They cannot apply to Martin 
Luther, as the Romans say, or any indi- 
vidual man or potentate, or any Protest- 
ant branch of the Church, or all of them 



As Delmeated iit History. 79 

together, in either or all of these pro- 
phetic marks or characteristics. They do 
apply with singular exactness and clear- 
ness to Roman Catholicism — the Papacy. 
Each mark or feature, and all in combi- 
nation, is a perfect photographic deline- 
ation of that power. Its whole history 
is a marvelous fulfillment of all the 
prophecies relating to Antichrist. 

In proof of this position, from its his- 
tory, we enter a vast field, in which the 
difficulty is not so much to find abun- 
dant proofs, as, from their exuberancy, to 
make selections, so as to keep within 
our prescribed limits of a volume for 
popular use. Its first mark is, It is an 
APOSTASY from a true faith in Jesus, 
gradual in its development and growth. 

It began to work even in the apos- 
tle's days, as a religious declension, after 
the first great revival on the day of Pen- 
tecost, and during much of the first cen- 
tury, under/ the preaching of the apostles 



8c5 The Great Conflict, 

and early Christians ; a sliding off from 
the solid foundation laid in Christ ; an 
obscuration of the doctrine of salvation 
by a living faith in Jesus alone ; a sub- 
stitution of a religion of works and hu- 
man merits, for faith ; and the specula- 
tions of human philosophy, falsely so- 
called, relative to the Godhead ; and 
about the Divinity and humanity of the 
Lord that bought them. 

The messages to the seven Churches of 
Asia are warnings against the beginnings 
of the insidious workings of the great 
APOSTASY. John in his epistles warns 
the Christians of his day against the 
Antichrists already existing among them. 
Its development into an organized sys- 
tem was held back by the pagan perse- 
cutions of the Roman Empire during the 
second and third centuries ; but early in 
the fourth century, under the external 
prosperity of Christianity in the reign of 
Constantine the Great, it began a more 



As Delineated in History. 8i 

rapid growth in the substitution of a 
splendid ecclesiasticism, for a living 
evangelism, of external forms, for a liv- 
ing faith. So gradual and insidious was 
its coming, that it is impossible to fix the 
precise date of the beginning of the 
Papacy, and consequently of its end, 
after a reign of 1,260 years. 

It is a singular fact that the very 
FORM in which our Saviour clothed the 
FOUNDATION PRINCIPLE of the true 
Church, has been perverted and made 
the foundation of the apostasy. 

At a certain time, when Jesus was 
alone with his disciples in a place of 
prayer, he asks them, " Whom do men 
say that I, the Son of man, am ?" " They 
answered and said, " Some say thou art 
John the Baptist; some say, Elias ; 
and others, J eremias, or one of the proph- 
ets." " Others say, that one of the old 
prophets is risen again." He saith unto 
them, " But whom say ye that I am "^ " 



82 The Great Conflict. 

And Simon Peter answered and said, 
" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God. And Jesus answered and 
said unto him, Blessed art thou, Si- 
mon Bar-jona : for flesh and blood 
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my 
Father which is in heaven. And I say 
unto thee. Thou art Peter, (nerpo^ — pe- 

TROS,) and upon this rock (ravrr) r^ nerpa — • 

this THE petra) I will build my Church." 
Petra was a great rock, petros a little 
stone. On the spiritual experimental 
knowledge of the Divinity — Godhood of 
Jesus, revealed by his Father — is the 
foundation of the Church. Regenerated 
souls through that knowledge are made 
LIVING STONES, as Peter was a little stone 
of the spiritual temple, founded on — 
framed into — that great foundation Rock, 
so by that knowledge made partakers 
of its nature. As matter of fact, Peter 
in the full faith and possession of that 
heaven-revealed truth, as a key to the 



As Delineated in History. %'i^ 

kingdom of heaven, did unlock the new 
dispensation of that kingdom on the day 
of Pentecost, even to the murderers of 
Jesus, convicted, stricken to the heart by 
his fearless and bold assertion of that 
great foundation truth — the Divinity 
and resurrection of the murdered Jesus. 

By the perversion of the form, and the 
real and practical, though not professed, 
denial of the principle, the apostasy has 
founded itself on Peter, and his pre- 
tended successors, the infallible popes. 
It has slidden off the rock — the spiritual 
truth — and tries to find a foundation on 
its shadow, the mere form of the truth, 
and even perverts the form. 

It is a singular feature in the character 
of the apostasy, and a singular fact in 
its historic development, that even re- 
generate souls, even some of the great 
lights of the true Church, began to for- 
get, or practically depart from the spir- 
itual character of the kingdom of heav- 



84 The Great Conflict, 

en, the real unity and strength of the 
Church, through its simple faith in Christ, 
its Divine Head, alone, and its power of 
defense and aggression through the 
Holy Ghost from the Father and the 
Son ; to a reliance on an outward, com- 
pact, and catholic organization of the 
Church with a visible headship — an arm- 
ing and fitting the Church by an earthly 
organization, on an earthly pattern, to 
compete with and defend itself against 
other earthly powers ; in other words, to 
a sliding away of the Church from being 
a spiritual power, to become an earthly 
physical force. After this an alliance 
with the State became natural enough. 
The incipiency of this tendency may be 
traced to the errors and dissembling of 
Peter himself — the apostle to the Jews ; 
to the Judaizing of the Petrine Chris- 
tian, back from faith to keeping the law 
as the essential of religion, and to the 
bondage of a priesthood or ecclesiastical 



As Delineated in History. 85 

orders and governors, or patterning the 
Church after Judaism. That tendency 
became the Ebionism of the following 
centuries, and slid, naturally enough, into 
the hierarchy, not through a few design- 
ing, ambitious men, though they were 
not wanting, but through the religious 
declension and consequent errors of the 
mass of the Church. 

That great light of the Church, Cyp- 
rian, who became Bishop of Carthage 
A. D. 248, two years after his marked and 
remarkable conversion and baptism, and 
who suffered martyrdom A. D. 258, sowed 
broadcast in his writings the seeds of 
episcopacy, prelacy, and the papacy, in 
his zeal for the visible unity and earthly 
headship of the Church, for its strength 
and defense against its enemies. 

In his tract De Unitate Bcclesice, as 
quoted by Dn Schaff, " he teaches that 
the Church was founded from the first 
by Christ on Peter alone, that, with all 



86 The Great Conflict, 

the equality of power among the apos- 
tles, unity might still be kept prominent 
as essential to her being. She has ever 
since remained one in unbroken episco- 
pal succession." With all this he de- 
nies, at the same time, the supremacy of 
Roman jurisdiction. At this early day, 
in the midst of the terrible persecu- 
tions of the third century, the true and 
the false are so intermingled, the true 
Church and the apostasy so blended, 
that it is impossible to date the distinct 
existence of the latter, or when it should 
be sufficiently matured to be thrown off 
from the former. 

WHERE WAS ST. PETER'S CHAIR ? 

In the latter part of the fourth cen- 
tury, A. D. 384, what might be termed, 
perhaps, the beginning of the rise of 
the two horned Lamb, the Apocalyptic 
** SECOND BEAST out of the earth," " Greg- 
ory Nazianzen was patriarch of Con- 



As Delineated in History. Sj 

stantinople, and Siricius, Bishop of 
Rome. There was for some time a con- 
test for the supremacy of the two bish- 
oprics, and a doubt relative to the loca- 
tion of St. Peters chair. He had been 
Bishop of Antioch in Asia, and Bishop 
of Alexandria in Africa ; and Mark, w^ho 
was affirmed to be his baptized son, 
Bishop of Rome." * 

One of these honored places ought to 
be the seat of supremacy ; but which ? 
Constantinople had become the capital of 
the Eastern Roman Empire, and there- 
fore also had claims. The two horns of 
the meek lamb seemed, even at that ear- 
ly day, somewhat disposed to gore each 
other. 

Gregory the Great became Bishop of 
Rome A. D. 590, and although he sup- 
posed he occupied the chair of St. Peter, 
made no pretensions to supremacy, and 
rebuked John, Bishop of Constantinople, 

* Urwic's " Triple Crown," p. 158. 



88 The Great Conflict, 

for assuming the title of " Universal 
Bishop," using in his letters the strong 
prophetic language, as it turned out in 
the end : " Whoever adopts or affects 

THE title of universal BISHOP, HATH 
THE PRIDE AND CHARACTER OF ANTICHRIST." 

He wrote long and earnest letters to 
John, and also to the Emperor Mauritius, 
against such an assumption as against 
the doctrines of the Apostles Paul and 
Peter, and highly detrimental to the 
interests of the ministry and the Church. 
His letters seem, however, to have been 
unavailing, both with John and his suc- 
cessor ; for though John died not long 
after, his successor, Cynacus, adopted the 
same pompous title. 

Gregory does not seem himself at 
this time to have been Antichrist, but 
grounded on the faith of Augustine and 
Paul, more devoted to the spiritual in- 
terests of souls than to any outward, 
worldly suprerrjacy or aggrandizement. 



As Delineated in History. 89 

It was Gregory who, about the year 
A. D. 597, sent out that Christian mis- 
sion to England, under the conduct of 
the monk Augustine, with his forty mis- 
sionaries, by which that nation was 
Christianized In form, at least, though 
there were evangelical Christians In the 
mountains of Wales before, perhaps 
converted under the ministry of Paul 
himself His later letters, however, to 
the usurper, murderer, and tyrant, Pho- 
cas, on his accession to the throne, 
throws a dark shade over his character 
as a Christian bishop. His fulsome flat- 
tery and almost blasphemous praises of 
that most cruel and meanest of tyrants, 
his reproaches of the murdered Mauri- 
tius, to w^hom, while emperor, he had ad- 
dressed equal flatteries, make us feel that 
he, too, though apparently at one time a 
" star of heaven," was involved In the sys- 
tem as in the folds of the tail of the Old 
Serpent, and " cast down to the earth." 



90 The Great Conflict, 

Notwithstanding his opposition to the 
title " Universal Bishop," that preroga- 
tive of the papacy, he has been declared 
a SAINT, perhaps qualified to be a Roman 
saint rather throuo^h his fall than his 
piety. 

His discussions of the subject, the ri- 
valry between Rome and Constantinople 
for the primacy, and the usurpation of 
the throne of the empire by Phocas, 
prepared the way for the title to be 
fixed on his successor, Boniface III., a 
few years after, which has adhered to 
every Pope of Rome since, down to 
Pius IX. The earthly and exceedingly 
vile origin of this assumption that dates 
the real beginning of the Papacy, or the 
full organic development of the great 
Apostasy, as many authors think, require 
a few passages of history to elucidate. 



As Dcliiicatcd in History. qt 

THE CHARACTER OF PHOCAS, WHO DECLARES 
THE FIRST POPE. 

" Phocas was a native of Asia Minor, 
of obscure and unknown parentage, who 
entered the army of the Emperor Mau- 
ritius as a common soldier, having at- 
tained the rank of centurion. He hap- 
pened in A. D. 602 to be with his com- 
pany on the banks of the Danube, when 
he headed a mutiny against the emperor 
among his troops, caused himself, to be 
proclaimed leader of the insurgents, and 
marched with them on Constantinople. 
The unfortunate Emperor Mauritius, 
with his wife and nine children, fled in a 
small bark to the Asiatic shore ; but the 
violence of the wind compelled him to 
land near Chalcedon, from whence he 
dispatched Theodoslus, his eldest son, 
to implore the friendship of the Persian 
monarch. 

" The Patriarch of Constantinople, Cy- 
nacus, consecrated the successful usurp- 



92 The Great Conflict, 

er, in the Church of St. John, the Bap- 
tist, emperor. Phocas three days after 
made his pubHc entry, drawn by four 
white horses, amid the acclamations of 
the thoughtless rabble, to the palace." 
His ministers of death were dispatched 
to Chalcedon. They dragged the Em- 
peror Mauritius from his sanctuary. 
His five sons were successively mur- 
dered before the eyes of their agonizing 
parent, at each stroke the emperor cry- 
ing out, " Thou art just, O Lord, and 
thy judgments are righteous!^ The tragic 
scene was finally closed by the execution 
of the emperor himself, in the twenty- 
third year of his reign and sixty-third 
year of his age. The flight of Theodo- 
sius, the eldest son, was intercepted by a 
rapid pursuit or deceitful message, and 
he was beheaded at Nice. 

" In this massacre the usurper had 
spared the widow and three daughters 
of the late emperor." They afterward 



As Delineated in History, 93 

took refuge in a church, then regarded 
as an inviolable asylum. The Patriarch 
Cynacus, moved by pity and by the sa- 
credness of the sanctuary, would not 
permit them to be dragged by force 
from that refuge. The vindictive tyrant, 
fearing to offend the Church at this early 
stage in his reign, desisted from violence 
and by most solemn oaths and promises 
of safety induced the ladies to quit their 
asylum. They soon after became the 
victims of his relentless fury, and Con- 
stantina and her three innocent daugh- 
ters were beheaded at Chalcedon, on the 
same ground stained with the blood of 
her husband and five sons." ^ All this 
was but the beginning of the murders 
of this vile wretch. 

To this monarch, Satanic beast, Boni- 
face III. applied for the title of Univer- 
sal Bishop, to be conferred on himself 

* Gibbon's " Rise and Fall," as quoted by Bowling's 
'* History of Romanism," pp. 58, 59. 



94 The Great Conflict, 

and his successors, Bishops of Rome. 
The vindictive Phocas had not forgotten 
the manly defense of the helpless em- 
press and daughters by Cynacus. He 
forbade the assumption of the title ever 
after by the Patriarch of Constantinople, 
and in A. D. 606 conferred it on Boni- 
face and his successors. Boniface III., 
first Pope made so by the pious Phocas, 
and given authority to reign over all the 
bishops, archbishops, priests, and monks 
of the Roman Catholic world, truly 
became the " horn more stout than his 
fellows, right out of the head of the 
beast," Phocas ; by the declaration of the 
great Saint Gregory himself, " Anti- 
christ." Shade of St. Peter, look down 
on this farce, this brutish Satanic apos- 
tasy, assuming thy chair that thou never 
didst assume or occupy, thy prerog- 
atives that thou never didst assume or 
own ! 

Who, from its whole history, its pres- 



As Delineated in History. 95 

ent condition, the condition of the 
merely nominal Christianity over which 
it holds sway, can doubt for a moment 
that it is pre-eminently the great apos- 
tasy from a true Christianity, both in 
principle and practice ? 



g6 The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SECOND MARK IS THE TIME OF ITS 
MANIFESTATION. 

IT is the little horn, and grows up 
among the " ten horns." It is re- 
vealed at the time of the breaking up 
of the Roman Empire by the Goths, 
Vandals, and other barbarous tribes of 
the North, and its division into the 
smaller kingdoms of Europe. 

Another symbol of the same power, 
which marks with almost equal accuracy 
the time of the rise or appearance of 
that power, is the second beast, the 
TWO-HORNED LAMB, that comes up from 
the earth about the time of the wound- 
ing to death of the last head of the 
FOURTH BEAST, or the breaking up of the 
Roman Empire, and soon has all the 
power of the first beast of Revelation 



As Delineated in History. 97 

— the FOURTH BEAST of Daniel — and 
makes an image of the first beast, and 
gives life to the image — gives an ecclesi- 
astical and spiritual power to an earthly 
form of empire, and causes all the world 
finally to worship the beast, to bow down 
under that double empire, secular and 
spiritual. 

Early in the fourth century (A. D. 312) 
Constantine the Great came to the 
throne, and recognized Christianity as 
the religion of the empire, and put an 
end to the pagan persecutions. In 
A. D. 330 he removes the seat of em- 
pire to Constantinople. 

Valentinian comes to the throne of 
the Western Empire, with its seat at 
Milan instead of Rome, A. D. 364, while 
his brother Valens was given the throne 
of the Eastern Empire. Soon after Val- 
entinian came to the throne he made a 
" law that no man should be compelled 
in his religion," and virtually the Chris- 



98 The Great Conflict, 

tian religion became the religion of the 
State. Though he referred the appoint- 
ment of the Metropolitan Bishop to a 
council of pastors, it soon began to be un- 
derstood of his successors that the em- 
peror was the head of the Church as well 
as of the empire, and the Church, with its 
bishops, under the control of the State.* 
Leo, surnamed The Great, acquired 
the episcopal chair at Rome A. D. 440. 
Du Pin, a Roman Catholic historian, 
writes : " He maintained his dignity 
with so much splendor, vigilance, and 
authority, that he rendered himself more 
famous in the Church than any of the 
Popes that had been before him since 
St. Peten He not only took a partic- 
ular care of the Church of Rome, and 
of those other Churches which were 
subject to his metropolis, but he ex- 
tended his pastoral vigilance over all 
the Churches of the East and West." 

* " Triple Crown," p. 183. 



As Delineated in History. 99 

This testimony is designed to be com- 
mendatory, and shows that the Papacy 
had made no inconsiderable advance in 
power at this early day. 

As another instance of its growth, 
Leo obtained a decree from Valentinian 
III., a mere youth, " That, for the peace 
of the Church, complete submission 
should be rendered to the Roman Bish- 
op. It declares that the primacy of the 
apostolic seat having been established 
by the merit of the Apostle Peter, by 
the dignity of the city of Rome, and by 
the authority of a holy synod, no pre- 
tended power shall arrogate to itself 
any thing against the authority of that 
seat. For peace can be universally pre- 
served only when the whole Church 
acknowledges its ruler. Resistance to 
the authority of the Roman Bishop is 
declared to be an offense against the 
State. It is established, as a settled 
ordinance for all time, that as well the 



loo The Great Conflict, 

Gallic bishops as the bishops of all 
other provinces, could not properly un- 
dertake any thing without the authority 
of the Pope of the Eternal City."^ 

The Council of Chalcedon, consisting 
of six hundred and thirty bishops, called 
by the Emperor Marcian about the mid- 
dle of the fifth century, or about A. D. 
451, decreed "that the Bishop of Rome 
should have the primacy, but the Bishop 
of Constantinople equal rights." Leo 
was represented at the Council by his 
legates, who happened to be out of 
the house when the decree was passed, 
and who, when informed of it, replied : 
" They should report the matter to the 
Apostolic See, the first bishop of the 
world, who might himself judge of the in- 
jury done his see." " Leo was highly 
incensed when informed of the action, 
and nothing could sooth him till the Pa- 
triarch of Constantinople wrote him a 

*" Triple Crown," pp. 184, 185. 



As Delineated in History. loi 

letter of servile apology, professing that 
the offensive canon had been passed 
without his concurrence, and renouncing 
the honor it conferred upon his see." * 

To this importance and stoutness had 
grown the " Little Horn " by the middle 
of the fifth century, or A. D. 451, al- 
though, as related in the previous chap- 
ter, it only gained its full imperial au- 
thority from Phocas in A. D. 606. 

CONDITION OF THE CIVIL ROMAN EMPIRE. 

What was the state of the Roman 
Empire at the same time 1 Toward the 
close of the fourth and early in the fifth 
century the decaying Roman Empire 
began to break up. The provinces of 
the empire, Britain, Germany, Gaul, 
Spain, and the north of Africa, were first 
to feel the shock of successive waves of 
the northern hordes. " Innumerable 
nations," says St. Jerome, "took posses- 

* " Triple Crown," p. 187. 



I02 The Great Conflict, 

sion of the whole of Gaul. The QuadI, 
the Vandals, the Sarmatians, the Alani, 
the Gepidse, the Heruli, Saxons, Bur- 
gundians, Germans, and Pannonians — 
horrible republic ! — ravaged the whole 
country between the Alps, the Pyrenees, 
the ocean, and the Rhine. Assur was 
with them. Mayence, formerly a famous 
city, was taken and sacked, and thou- 
sands of its inhabitants massacred. 
Worms was ruined by a long siege. The 
people of the powerful cities of Rheims, 
Amiens, and Arras ; the Morini, situated 
in the far parts of Belgium, and the in- 
habitants of Tournay, Spires, and Stras- 
bourg, were transported into Germany. 
Aquitaine, the Lyonnaise, and the Narbo- 
naise were entirely devastated, except 
some few of the towns, and these the 
steel smote without, while famine deso- 
lated them within." 

It was not long before these waves, 
crowding wave on wave, flowed over into 



As Delineated in History. 103 

Italy, and on toward the seat of empire. 
About A. D. 405 a deluge of barbarians, 
consisting of Vandals, Snevi, Burgun- 
dians, Goths, and Alani, numbering not 
less than two hundred thousand fighting 
men, under the command of Radagaisus, 
poured down upon Italy." Although 
this host, by the wary generalship of 
Stilicho, were hemmed in, and compelled 
by famine, in A. D. 406, to surrender to 
the Roman arms, the respite to the falling 
empire was of short duration ; for Alaric 
the Goth, two years afterward, (A. D. 
408,) entered Italy a second time, turn- 
ing Ravenna, a strong fortress where the 
emperor resided, marched straight on 
Rome, and laid siege to it. The Ro- 
mans, shut up and dying in multitudes 
by famine, were compelled to purchase 
a peace. Alaric's terms were, ''All the 
gold and silver in the city, all the rich 
and precious movables, all the slaves of 
barbarian origin." When asked in a 



I04 The Great Conflict, 

suppliant manner by the ministers of the 
Senate of Rome, " If such, O King, are 
your demands, what do you intend to 
leave us?" "Your lives," replied the 
haughty conqueror. He, however, modi- 
fied the terms somewhat, and Rome, 
which had not been violated by a hostile 
army for six hundred years, purchased 
a temporary release for an enormous 
amount of gold and silver and merchan- 
dise, and Alaric retired to winter quar- 
ters. The Emperor Honorius, secure 
in the fortress of Ravenna, refusing to 
ratify the treaty made by the Romans, 
Alaric returned next year (A. D. 409) 
and took possession of the city, and con- 
ferred the sovereignty of the empire 
upon Attains, Prefect of Rome. Hono- 
rius still refusing to treat with him, he 
returned a third time, and gave up the 
city to plunder, pillage, and a terrible 
slaughter of her citizens ; though, as 
Alaric and his followers were Christians 



As Delineated in History. 105 

in name, the churches and religious 
houses were spared.* 

In A. D. 439, Genseric, the Vandal, 
had completed the conquest of Carthage 
and the Roman provinces of Northern 
Africa. Attila,justly called the "Scourge 
of God," the leader of the Huns, after 
ravaging Germany, Scythia, Thrace, Mac- 
edonia, and Greece, poured his victori- 
ous hosts into Gaul, but was defeated by 
the Romans and their Gothic allies in 
the bloody battle at Chalons, (A. D. 451.) 
" The next year the Huns poured like a 
torrent upon Italy, and spread their rav- 
ages over all Lombardy." The fugitives 
from this invasion formed ultimately the 
Venetian Republic.f In A. D. 455 Rome 
was again taken and pillaged by a horde 
of Vandals from Africa, led by the fa- 
mous Genseric. 

In A. D. 476, Odoacer, chief of the 
Heruli, without much resistance took 
•^ Wilson's Outlines, t Ibid. 



io6 The Great Conflict, 

possession of Rome, abolished the title 
of Caesar and Augustus, and proclaimed 
himself king of Italy ; and the Roman 
Empire was no more, after an existence 
of over twelve hMndred years, and part 
of that time reigning over nearly the 
whole earth, except India and China. 

Of the condition of affairs just before 
the final fall of the empire, Symmachus, 
the heathen pontiff, augur, and prefect 
of Rome, says, in a letter to a friend : 
" You complain that I send you no nar- 
rative of public events. What if I an- 
swer. It is better to let them pass unno- 
ticed ? The ancient oracles have grown 
dumb ; in the grotto of Cumse are read 
no mystic characters ; no voice issues 
from the tree of Dodona; no chanted 
verse is heard amid the vapors of the 
Delphic cell. And we, mortal and impo- 
tent, who owe our very existence to the 
act of a religious demigod, may wisely 
learn from the silence of heaven, and 



As Delineated in History, 107 

ponder in quiet over the sad history of 
our race, for which the book of prophecy 
has no longer a leaf." Such the lament 
of a heathen over humanity without 
God, without government, without law, 
in its utter helplessness. The old empire 
lies prostrate. " The body of the fourth 
and terrible beast of Daniel has been 
given to the burning flame." The fount- 
ains of the great deep — the great sea 
of humanity — has been broken up, and 
all civil government and order is over- 
whelmed. The old empire is trodden 
down by the commingled barbarians of 
Europe and Asia, amid the confusion of 
various languages and ideas, and customs 
and religions, an utter chaos ; society 
dissolving in its helplessness into its 
elements of savage individuality and 
isolation. 

But " the beast which thus had a 
wound by a sword did live." The bar- 
barians swept over the empire like a 



io8 The Great Conflict, 

torrent for plunder and rapine, and 
passed on. Some of the great cities re- 
sisted with considerable success, others 
purchased exemption from pillage, and 
the fugitives, even from sacked and des- 
olated towns, returned after the flood 
had passed over. The necessities of 
humanity compelled a sort of organized 
governments. These municipal govern- 
ments naturally took on the familiar 
forms of the Roman Republic under 
Roman laws — a government by the peo- 
ple. Many of these municipal govern- 
ments had not been disturbed, but per- 
mitted to continue by the conquerors 
under their general sovereignty. These 
city governments, under the influence 
of the necessities and rights of the peo- 
ple on the one side and the power and 
sovereignty of the conquerors on the 
other, becoming provincial governments, 
and the commingled races becoming 
separate, or the stronger gaining ascend- 



As Delineated in History. 109 

ency over the feebler races, they develop 
finally into the kingdoms of Europe of 
the following centuries. And last, but 
by no means least, and at the same time, 
the religious element of Christianity 
comes in with its plastic power to bring 
order out of this utter confusion. Many 
of these barbarous tribes had already in 
form been Christianized, and the super- 
stition of other dark tribes in this super- 
stitious age led these barbarians to 
great deference toward the ministers of 
religion. The Church became a mighty 
power in giving form to the new order 
of things. Church honors and places 
and sanctions were sought by peoples 
and nobles and conquerors and kings. 

Could a prophetic picture or symbol 
of the horns, for protection and aggres- 
sion, gradually growing up out of the 
old beast-power, with the " little horn," 
more stout than its fellows, gradually 
growing up in the midst of them, more 



no The Great Conflict, 

accurately shadow the events, or the 
historic facts more perfectly fulfill the 
prophetic symbol ? 

The great apostasy takes an organ- 
ized form, assumes power, and appears 
on the stage of action amid the very 
surroundings and at the very time pre- 
dicted. As the empire went down in 
divisions into smaller kingdoms the 
Papacy came up. 



As Delineated in History. 1 1 1 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THIRD — THE TRIPLE CROWN, AND REIGN 
OVER THE KINGS. 

THE TRIPLE CROWN TAKES THE PLACE 
of the three " little horns," and as- 
sumes the reign over the kings of the 
earth ; a lamb in appearance, but with 
two horns, and speaks like a dragon ; 
assumes all the power of the first beast, 
makes an image of it, and causes all the 
world to worship it, or bow under its 
sway. 

In A. D. 752 Pepin, having obtained 
the approval of Pope Zachery to the 
measure, dethroned Childeric III., the 
lawful king of France, and sent him into 
a convent, assumed the government, and 
was crowned king of France soon after- 
ward by Pope Stephen II., the successor 
of Zachery. 



112 The Great Conflict. 

In A. D. 753 Alstulphus, king of the 
Lombards, invaded the exarchate, and 
laid siege to Ravenna. Eutychius, the 
last of the exarchs, after a brave but un- 
availing defense, fled with the remnant 
of his army to his master, the Emperor 
Constantine, at Constantinople. Thus 
ended the exarchate of Ravenna as a 
province of the Eastern Empire. 

Aistulphus, elated with this victory, 
sent a messenger to Rome demanding 
its submission as a part of the conquered 
province. Pope Stephen, in this emer- 
gency, appealed to the Emperor Con- 
stantine, at Constantinople, for aid, or 
for such a treaty with Aistulphus as 
might continue the exarchate ; but the 
emperor was too much occupied with the 
Saracens, at that time, to send an army, 
and without that any treaty was impossi- 
ble. Failing in that, the Pope appealed 
to the Virgin Mary, and St. Peter, and St. 
Paul, and a host of other saints, carrying 



As Delineated in History. 113 

their Images in solemn procession, but 
with no better success. 

In this extremity Stephen crossed the 
Alps to visit Pepin in person, to implore 
the aid of the king of France. Pepin 
returned with him, leading his victori- 
ous army in person. In the mean time 
Stephen had been adroit enough to gain 
a promise from Pepin not to restore the 
exarchate to the emperor, but to give it 
to St. Peter. 

Aistulphus was besieged in his cap- 
ital, Pavia, and the Lombards, after a 
feeble resistance, were obliged to submit 
to the arms of France, and, as the price 
of peace, to deliver up the exarchate to 
the Pope, " with all the cities, castles, 
and territories thereto belonging, to be 
forever held and possessed by the most 
HOLY Pope Stephen and his successors 
in the Apostolic See of St. Peter.''^ 

* These facts are derived from " Bowling's History of 
Romanism," pp. 168, 169. 
8 



114 The Great Conflict, 

Pepin had no sooner returned with 
his army to France than Aistulphus, en- 
raged at the Pope for bringing the 
French invasion on Lombardy, and for 
his former repeated threats of Divine 
vengeance against him for wresting the 
exarchate from his " most religious son, 
the emperor," and concluding, very nat- 
urally, that he had as much right to it as 
Pepin or the Pope, resolved not to fulfill 
the treaty, and soon laid siege to Rome, 
" declaring to the people that he came 
not as their enemy, but as the enemy of 
the Pope ;" " that if they would deliver 
up the city they would be treated as 
friends ; if not, he would level the walls, 
and none of them should escape to tell 
the tale." 

The Pope immediately dispatched the 
Abbot Fulrad with most earnest let- 
ters to Pepin and the French dukes to 
come to the rescue of St. Peter, promising 
them " a hundredfold in this world, and 



As Delineated in History, 115 

in the world to come life everlasting." 
As the siege was pressing, and the 
Pope s affairs becoming every day more 
critical, and hearing nothing from Pepin 
or the abbot, he began to fear his ap- 
peals in his former letter had not been 
strong enough to induce Pepin to cross 
the Alps again so soon, and hit on 
another expedient of Papal skill and 
device for the interest of the Church, 
and receives a letter directly from St. 
Peter himself from heaven, through his 
postmaster, the Pope, to Pepin. 

SIMON PETER'S LETTER FROM HEAVEN. 

Commencing thus : " Simon Peter, a 

SERVANT AND APOSTLE OF JeSUS ChRIST, 

to the three most excellent kings, Pe- 
pin, Charles, and Carloman : to all the 
holy bishops, abbots, presbyters, and 
monks ; to all the dukes, counts, com- 
manders of the French army, and to the 
whole people of France: grace unto you, 



ii6 The Great Conflict, 

and peace be multiplied." " I am the 
Apostle Peter, to whom it was said, 
' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I 
will build my Church,' ' Feed my sheep ;' 
* And to thee will I give the keys,' etc. 
As this was all said to me in particular, 
all who hearken to me and obey my ex- 
hortations may persuade themselves, 
and firmly believe, that their sins are 
forgiven them ; and that they will be 
admitted, cleansed from all guilt, into 
life everlasting." " Hearken therefore to 
me, TO ME, Peter the apostle and 
SERVANT of Jesus Christ; and since I 
have preferred you to all the nations of 
the earth, hasten, I beseech and conjure 
you, if you care to be cleansed front your 
sins, and to earn an eternal reward, 
hasten to the relief of my city, of my 
Church, of the people committed to my 
care, ready to fall into the hands of the 
wicked Lombards, their merciless ene- 
mies.- It has pleased the Almighty that 



As Delineated in History, 1 1 7 

my body should rest in this city ; the 
body that has suffered for the sake of 
Christ such exquisite torments ; and can 
you, my most Christian sons, stand by 
unconcerned, and see it insulted by the 
most wicked of nations ? . . . Our lady, 
THE Virgin Mary, mother of God, joins 
in earnestly entreating, nay, commands 
you to hasten to me, to fly to the relief 
of my favorite people, reduced almost to 
the last gasp, and calling in their ex- 
tremity night and day upon her and 
upon me. . . . The thrones and domin- 
ions, the principalities and powers, and 
the whole multitude of heavenly hosts, 
entreat you, together with us, not to 
delay, but to come with all possible 
speed and rescue my chosen flock from 
the jaws of the ravening wolves ready 
to devour them. My vicar (Stephen) 
might, in this extremity, have recurred, 
and not in vain, to other nations ; but 
with me the French are, and ever have 



ii8 The Great Conflict, 

been, the first, the best, the most deserv- 
ing of all nations ; and I would not suf- 
fer the reward, the exceeding great re- 
ward, that is reserved, in this and the 
other world, for those who shall deliver 
my people, to be earned by any other."* 
This letter of St. Peter, of which we 
only give a part, is made to reiterate or 
indorse all that the Pope had written in 
his former letter. (What a pity that 
Stephen had not lived in our day of 
novel, novelette, and story writing ; his 
creative genius would have made books 
that would have had a great run, en- 
riched publisher and author, and spread 
his fame far and wide !) 

This letter, direct from heaven from 
St. Peter, was dispatched by a messen- 
ger in great haste to Pepin ; it met him, 
with a large army, on the plains of Lom- 
bardy, within a day's march of the Alps. 

* This letter of St. Peter is found in the " Codex Caro- 
linus," as quoted in Dowling's History, p. 171. 



As Delineated in History, 119 

(Peter ought to have known that.) He 
soon laid siege again to Pavia, and drew 
Aistulphus away from Rome to defend 
his own capital. He was soon obliged 
to sue for peace, which Pepin granted 
on condition that he would carry out the 
former treaty, add to the exarchate the 
city Comacchio, pay all the expenses 
of the war, and an annual tribute to 
France of twelve thousand solidi of gold. 
Pepin having bound Aistulphus by oath 
to these conditions, had a new instru- 
ment drawn up, and signed by himself, his 
two sons, and the chief barons of France, 
conveying all these twenty-one cities, 
including the Pentapolis and provinces, 
to be forever held and possessed by St. Pe- 
ter and his lawful successors in the See of 
Rome. He appointed the Abbot Fulrad 
his commissioner to receive in the Pope's 
name all the places named in the docu- 
ment. The abbot, attended by the com- 
missioners of Aistulphus, visited every 



I20 The Great Conflict, 

city, received hostages and the keys, and 
conveyed them to Rome, and laid the 
instrument with the keys on the tomb 
of St. Peter, about A. D. 755, " The am- 
ple measure," says Gibbon, "of the exar- 
chate, might comprise all the provinces 
of Italy which had obeyed the emperor 
and his vicegerent ; but its strict and 
proper limits were included in the terri- 
tories of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara. 
Its inseparable dependency was the Pen- 
tapolis, which stretched along the Adri- 
atic from Rimini to Ancona, and ad- 
vanced into the midland country as far 
as the ridges of the Apennines." 

The Duchy of Ferrara, included in the 
above, was added to St. Peter's patri- 
mony by Desideratus, Duke of Tuscany, 
in consideration of the Pope's aid in 
gaining for himself the succession after 
the death of Aistulphus, which occurred 
soon after his treaty with Pepin. 

So the Papacy received its ecclesias- 



As Delineated in History. 121 

tical or spiritual power from the usurper 
and tyrant, Phocas, and its temporal 
power or triple crown from the usurper 
Pepin, as rewards for the Pope's counsel 
and aid in the usurpation of Pepin. 

Adrian, elected Pope K. D. 772, re- 
ceived the homage of Rieti and Spoleto, 
cities of Lombardy, but allowed them to 
choose a duke among themselves. 

In A. D. 774, Charlemagne, sending 
the last king of the Lombards into a 
convent, assumed the title of King of 
France and Lombardy. Having deliv- 
ered Rome and the Papacy from the Lom- 
bards, he visited Pope Adrian, and was 
received in the greatest splendor by him. 
In doing the honors of the occasion, the 
king and the Pope were evidently striv- 
ing to outvie each other. ** Rorne was 
really subject to Charles, and he con- 
firmed the grants made by his father, 
Pepin, to the patrimony of St. Peter." 

After twenty-six years of wars and 



122 The Great Conflict, 

conquests, Charlemagne again visited 
Rome, Leo III. occupying the chair of 
St. Peter. "At the Christmas Festival, 
A. D. 799, Charles, to gratify the Ro- 
mans, appeared in the Church of St. 
Peter in the dress of a Patrician. After 
the celebration of the holy mysteries, 
Pope Leo suddenly placed on Charle- 
magne's head the golden crown of em- 
peror, and conferred on him the iron 
crown of the kingdom of Lombardy. 
The dome resounded with the acclama- 
tion of the people — 'long life and 
VICTORY TO Charles, the most pious Au- 
gustus, crowned by God the great and 
PACIFIC emperor of THE RoMANS.' The 
head and body of Charlemagne were 
consecrated by the royal unction ; after 
the manner of the Cesars, he was saluted 
or adored by the pontiff; his coronation- 
oath represents a promise to maintain 
the faith and privileges of the Church ; 
and the first fruits were paid in his 



As Delineated in History. 123 

rich offerings to the shrine of the 
apostle." ^' 

Charlemagne and succeeding princes 
added other cities and provinces to the 
papal government, and the Papacy still 
wears the triple crown of " the three 
horns plucked up before it." The em- 
pire of Charlemagne extended over 
France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary, 
Transylvania, Istria, Croatia, and Dal- 
matia, and the Pope had transferred his 
allegiance from the sovereign of Greece 
to the Emperor of the West. 

After three hundred years of chaos, 
and confusion, and slaughter, by and 
among the northern barbarians, the em- 
pire is restored, order reigns, modern 
civilization dawns on Europe. " The 
deadly wound of the beast is healed." 
An Image was made of it, and life given 
to the IMAGE. To an earthly empire 
was added an ecclesiastical, a spiritual 

* Gibbon, chap. xlix. 



124 The Great Conflict, 

power, making a government more po- 
tent and terrible than the first beast of 
Revelation, or the fourth beast of 
Daniel. From this time onward for 
nearly seven hundred years the power of 
the papacy increased, till it held su- 
preme sway over the kings and mon- 
archs of Europe. 

FORGERY OF THE PAPACY FOR REGAL POWERS. 

" The celebrated forged decretals, or 
canons of councils and ordinances of 
Popes, brought to light in the ninth cen- 
tury, assert the supremacy of the Church 
above the State, aggrandize the episcopal 
orders, and especially declare the papal 
sovereignty to be ultimate and absolute 
— a Divine rule subject to no human 
control." " They were appealed to with- 
out suspicion in public transactions, and 
used by Popes from Nicholas I. from his 
first acquaintance with them (A. D. 864) 
v/ithout any opposition, till the Refor- 



As Delineated in History. 125 

matlon led to the detection of the for- 
gery." EarHer and more brazen than this 
was the forged deed or document of con- 
veyance of Constantlne the Great to 
Pope Sylvester, assigning to " Blessed 
Sylvester " and his successors, to the end 
of time, the Lateran palace, crown, miter, 
escort, couriers, and horsemen ; in short, 
all the retinue or courtly luster of an 
empire." It also confers on " Blessed 
Father Sylvester and his successors the 
city of Rome, all Italy, and the prov- 
inces, places, and cities of the western 
region, to remain subject to the pontiffs 
and the holy Church of the Romans. 
Popes Adrian I. and Leo III. used this 
document in argument with Charle- 
magne for his favor to the Holy See. 
Under the warrant of this forged grant 
of Constantine the custom of crowning 
the Pope at his enthronement in Peter's 
chair began with Nicholas I., the em- 
peror acting as equerry. 



126 The Great Conflict, 

In A. D. 1073 Hildebrand came to the 
Papal throne as Gregory VII. The 
German emperors had claimed the right 
of approval of a papal election. Henry 
III. of Germany had called a general 
council at Scutari, A. D. 1046, and de- 
posed the three pretenders to the pope- 
dom — Gregory VI., for simony; Bene- 
dict IX. and Sylvester III., for the same, 
and scandalous lives in general. Greg- 
ory VII. called a council about A. D. 
1075, which " denounced a curse against 
any one who should accept the ' invest- 
iture ' as an ecclesiastical appointment 
at a layman's hands." Henry IV., em- 
peror of Germany, opposed this action, 
insisting on his right to a voice in a 
papal election. Gregory summoned him 
to Rome to answer for his refractory 
conduct. Henry called a council of Ger- 
man bishops at Worms, which passed a 
decree deposing Gregory from the pa- 
pal throne. Gregory at once anathe- 



As Delineated in History, 127 

matized, excommunicated, and deposed 
Henry. 

Partly through discontent among the 
States of the empire, which the priests 
under the Pope could readily create, 
and partly through the universal dread 
of the Pope's maledictions reaching to 
the next world, the emperor at last had 
to pass the Alps in the dead of the un- 
usually severe winter of A. D. 1077 to 
present himself, a bare-headed and bare- 
footed suppliant, at the gate of Gregory's 
palace. " Gregory was at Canossa, a 
fortress near Reggio, belonging to his 
faithful adherent, the Countess Matilda. 
The emperor was admitted, without his 
guards, into an outer court of the castle. 
There the greatest monarch in Europe 
waited three days and three nights, in 
only a woolen shirt and with naked feet, 
before he was admitted to an audience of 
the Pope, shut up with the tender and 
loving Countess Matilda." "In the end, 



128 The Great Conflict, 

through his humiliation, and prayers, and 
tears, aided by the intercessions of per- 
sons In favor with his holiness, papal 
mercy condescended to grant Henry the 
honor of kissing the Popes toe, and abso- 
lution on condition that he would not 
reassume the title, or dare to exercise 
the functions, of emperor till a congress 
should be held to decide upon the 
case."* The arrogance of the Pope in 
his reign over the kings of the earth 
seems to us at this day Incredible. 

Says Dr. Lanigan, an Irish Catholic 
historian : " A letter of Pope Gregory 
VII. to Turlogh, king of Ireland, to the 
archbishops, bishops, abbots, nobles, and 
to all Christians inhabiting Ireland, much 
in the style of several other letters writ- 
ten to various kings, princes, etc., claim- 
ing not only spiritual, but temporal and 
political superiority over the kingdoms 
and principalities of Europe ; having 

*" Bowling's History," p. 244; "Triple Crown," p. 243. 



As Delineated in History. 129 

insinuated his claim over Ireland, he 
gives directions to the king to refer to the 
Pope whatever affairs might require his 
assistance. How Turlogh acted under 
this injunction we are not informed ; but 
this much is certain, Turlogh remained 
independent king of Ireland till A. D. 
1086, when he died at his chief palace, 
near Killaloe." 

ST. PATRICK NO ROMAN. 

Ireland became Christian at an early 
day, very much under the missionary 
labors of St. Patrick, who was by no 
means a Roman Catholic, for he lived 
and preached and died before that sys- 
tem was hardly developed, certainly not 
to any very great extent. 

Of the evangelization and Churches 
of Ireland Dr. Lanigan says : "It is uni- 
versally admitted that there were Chris- 
tians in congregations in Ireland before 
the mission of Palladius, in A. D. 431, 



130 The Great Conflict, 

but how or by whom the Christian faith 
was introduced into this country it is 
impossible to determine. Palladius re- 
mained but a very short time." ^ " Pat- 
rick had become deeply interested in 
the inhabitants of the. country, by hav- 
ing spent some years among them in 
slavery. Making his escape, he reached 
his home, near Boulogne, in France, and 
then came back to labor for the people's 
souls. But whatever may have been his 
success, he settled not the country in 
subjection to the Roman Pontiff, nor 
according to the present hierarchical 
form of government, for we are told that 
he planted three hundred and sixty- 
five Churches, over which were placed 
three hundred and sixty-five bishops, and 
three thousand presbyters. (Congrega- 
tional or Presbyterian form of govern- 
ment.) Indeed, the controversies be- 
tween the Irish missionaries and the 

* " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland," vol. i, p. 9. 



As Delineated in History. 131 

legates of Rome on the continent, or 
what has been said of them, is sufficient 
proof that for three centuries after the 
death of St. Patrick, A. D. 460, the 
Irish Churches were not in fellowship 
with 'St. Peter's Chair.'"* 

Up to the death of Turlogh, (A. D. 
1086,) Ireland had been ecclesiastically 
free, and in politics self-governed. All 
the attempts of the Papacy to bring her 
into bondage had failed. 

HOW IRELAND BECAME ROMAN. 

Now let Irishmen know how Ireland 
became Roman Catholic. Here and 
there approximations toward the pre- 
latical form of government had oc- 
curred in the pastorates of the Irish 
Churches. "Gillebert, Bishop of Lim- 
erick, went to the continent. There his 
self-complacency was somewhat marred 

*NenniuR, in Usher's " Religion of the Ancient Irish," 
chap. viii. 



132 The Great Conflict, 

by appearing unaccustomed to the style 
of service of the Roman Churches. He 
became zealous for bringing all the Irish 
modes of worship, of which there was a 
great variety, into agreement with the 
order of Rome. He wrote more than 
one treatise * for the purpose of procur- 
ing that the various schismatical orders 
with which almost all Ireland is be- 
wildered may yield to the one Catholic 
and Roman office.'" "It is probable," 
says Lanigan, " that Gillebert was en- 
couraged in his proceedings by Anselm, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, although it 
can scarcely be supposed that Anselm 
supplied him with his bad arguments ; 
but he did not succeed at that time, at 
least to any extent, in setting aside the 
Irish offices." For his services in this 
direction, however, he was appointed 
Legate for the Pope in Ireland by his 
holiness. Paschal II. 

" The Roman authorities of the conti- 



As Delineated in History. 133 

nent made loud and severe complaints 
of the state of the Church in Ireland. 
Among them, the far-famed St. Bernard 
states, as an instance of what he calls 
paganism, the multiplication of bishops 
as a thing unheard of since the begin- 
ning of Christianity." "St. Bernard," 
continues Lanigan, " was not aware that 
this was owing to the Irish system of 
chorepiscopi. Yet I allow that it was 
carried too far; at any rate, it was not 
'paganism' and he was mistaken in sup- 
posing that the multiplication of bishops 
was a thing unheard of; for it is well 
known that in the earlier times of the 
Church a bishop was placed in every 
town where there was a considerable 
number of the faithful. (See Fleury, ' In- 
stit.au Dr, Bed.' ^diVt I, chap, iii.) So 
what St. Bernard says of Ireland, namely, 
* that almost every Church had a bishop 
of its own! was actually followed, as 
there was usually in those times only 



134 The Great Conflict, 

one Church in each town. Nor was 
there any law against fixing bishops in 
small cities or towns prior to one of the 
Council of Sardica, which, by the by, was 
not generally followed.""^ 

" Malachy, who held the episcopate of 
Armagh, sympathized much in the views 
of Gillebert. He meditated that his see 
was entitled to rank with the metropol- 
itans of other countries, and he coveted 
a palliufn, that his dignity might be 
known throughout Christendom. But 
he thought it becoming to unite another 
see (Cashel) with his own, as applicant 
for the same honor. * St. Malachy being 
arrived in Rome, waited on the then Pope 
Innocent II., by whom he was most kind- 
ly received.' The Pope hearing from 
him an account of the state of things in 
Ireland, and how he had exerted himself, 
appointed him his Legate Apostolic for 

* Lanigan, as quoted in the "Triple Crown," pp. 
253-355. 



As Delineated in History. 135 

all Ireland, in the room of Gillebert, who 
had resigned the office through advanced 
age." At his request the sees of Cashel 
and Armagh were readily confirmed, 
but on his application for the palliums, 
the Pope replied, ' This is a matter which 
must be transacted with greater solem- 
nity. Do you, summoning the bishops 
and clergy, and the chiefs of your coun- 
try, celebrate a general council, and after 
you have all agreed on this point, apply 
for the palliums, by means of respect- 
able persons, and they shall be given 
you.'* 

" This reply of Innocent was the right 
one for his purpose. The gift of a pal- 
Hum was tantamount to the receiver 
taking an oath of fealty to the Pope. 
The whole Irish nation. Church and 
State, must, in due form, succumb, and by 
'respectable^ deputies, request at the pon- 
tifical hands the favor of being made a 

* "Eccl History of Ireland," chap, xxvii, sec. 4. 



136 The Great Conflict. 

slave ; and then, but not till then, the 
Pope will, in his clemency and condescen- 
sion, grant that the fetters shall be put 
on and firmly riveted forever." * 

According to Lanigan, (A. D. 1148,) 
" Malachy held a council at Innispatrick, 
when the business of the palliums was 
considered, and it was resolved that the 
required application should be made. 
The chair of St. Peter was at this time 
filled by Pope Eugenius, and Malachy 
wishing to go on the affair, it was 
agreed that he should bear the request 
of the nation to the vicar of Christ. 
Malachy died on the way ; but Eugenius 
was too generous to allow that sad event 
to deprive the Irish of the pontifical 
grace they sought. Under his Holiness's 
commission came Cardinal Paparo a few 
years afterward, with full powers to hold 
a synod, and, to make assurance doubly 
sure, to bestow four palliums instead of 

* " Triple Crown," p. 256. 



As Delineated in History. 137 

two — one each on Armagh and Cashel, 
first sought, and one each also on Dublin 
and Tuam."* 

" Thus, after a long struggle, the 
Churches of Ireland surrendered to 
Rome. Ecclesiastically, the rose and 
the thistle had for centuries graced the 
tiara; and now the lowly yet lovely 
shamrock was torn from its soil and 
twined on the triple crown. Ah ! twined 
on the triple crown indeed ! not to flour- 
ish, but to wither ! For where afterward 
was heard the fame of Ireland's saint- 
ship or scholarship, or of her high civil- 
ization or independence of her sons ? 
By the pride and perfidy of her clergy, 
Erin became the sworn vassal of the 
Roman lord."f "It seems as if she 
sacrificed in toto her heart and strength 
for freedom the instant she bent her 
knee in presence of the Pope." 

* See Lanigan, the Irish Catholic Historian, 
t Ulrich's " Triple Crown," p. 257, 



138 The Great Conflict, 

This occurred, according to Lanigan, 
A. D. 1 152. 

Now let Irishmen learn how Ireland 
came under the British crown. " Hav- 
ing thus sold herself for nought to the 
Pope, she had soon to hear her owner 
say, * Shall I not do what I will with my 
own ? ' " 

HOW IRELAND CAME UNDER THE BRITISH 
CROWN. 

In A. D. II 54, an Englishman by the 
name of Breakspear was placed in the 
chair of St. Peter. An Irishman might 
say, " Bad omen in that man s name ; it 
betokens mischief of some kind." Break- 
spear was crowned Pope under the name 
Adrian IV. Soon after Henry II., king 
of England, set his heart on the fair 
SISTER, Erin, to add her to his domin- 
ions, John of Salisbury, chaplain to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, applied to 
Pope Adrian, as supreme, for a grant of 
it to his sovereign, that he " might ex- 



As Delineated in History. 139 

tend the boundaries of the Church, ex- 
tirpate the weeds of vice from the Lord's 
field, and promote the knowledge of the 
true faith among its unlearned and rude 
people." Lanigan, the Irish Catholic 
historian, says of this transaction be- 
tween King Henry and Pope Adrian : 
" What an apostolic and exemplary sov- 
ereign was Henry Plantagenet! It is 
strange that the Pope should have list- 
ened to such stuff, while he knew the 
palliums had been sent, only three or 
four years before that time, to Ireland 
by his patron and benefactor, the good 
Pope Eugenius III., who was, as St. 
Bernard states, a very worthy man ; 
that many good regulations had been 
made ; that there were excellent bishops 
in the country, such as Gelarius, of 
Armagh, and Christian, of Lismore ; and 
that the Irish Church was not then in so 
degenerate a state as to require the 
pious exertions of such a king as Henry." 



140 The Great Conflict. 

Adrian thought differently from Dr. 
Lanigan. In the plenitude of his pon- 
tifical authority he granted what was 
asked. Though somewhat lengthy, we 
give Adrian's bull transferring Ireland 
to the crown of England, as given in 
Leland's " History of Ireland," book i, 
chap. i. 

ADRIAN'S DEED OF TRANSFER OF IRELAND TO 
ENGLAND. 

"Adrian, Bishop, servant of the serv- 
ants of God, to his dearest son in Christ, 
the illustrious king of England, greeting, 
an apostolic benediction. 

" Full laudably and profitably hath 
your magnificence conceived the design 
of propagating your glorious renown on 
earth, and completing your reward of 
eternal happiness in heaven ; while, as a 
Catholic prince, you are intent on en- 
larging the borders of the Church, teach- 
ing the truths of the Christian faith to 



As Delineated in History. 141 

the ignorant and rude, and exterminat- 
ing the roots of vice from the field of 
the Lord ; and for the more convenient 
execution of this purpose, requiring the 
counsel and favor of the Apostolic See ; 
in which the maturer your deliberation, 
and the greater the discretion of your 
procedure, by so much the happier, we 
trust, will be your progress, with the 
assistance of the Lord, as all things are 
used to come to a prosperous end and 
issue, which take their beginning from 
the ardor of faith and the love of re- 
ligion. 

"There is, indeed, no doubt but that 
Ireland, and all the islands on which 
Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, hath 
shone, and which have received the doc- 
trines of the Christian faith, do belong to 
the jurisdiction of St. Peter and of the 
Holy Roman Church, as your excellency 
also doth acknowledge. And therefore 
we are the more solicitous to propagate 



142 The Great Conflict, 

the righteous plantation of faith in this 
land, and the branch acceptable to God, 
as we have the secret conviction of con- 
science that this is your bounden duty. 
"You then, most dear son in Christ, 
have signified to us your desire to enter 
into the island of Ireland, in order to 
reduce the people to obedience unto 
laws, and to extirpate the plants of vice ; 
and that you are willing to pay from 
each house a yearly pension of one 
penny to St. Peter, and that you will 
preserve the rights of the Churches of 
this land whole and inviolate. We 
therefore, with that grace and accept- 
ance suited to your pious and laudable 
design, and favorably assenting to your 
petition, do hold it good and acceptable, 
that, for extending the borders of the 
Church, restraining the progress of vice, 
for the correction of manners, the plant- 
ing of virtue, and increase of religion, 
you enter this island, and execute 



As Deliiieated in History. 143 

therein whatever shall pertain to the 
honor of God and the welfare of the 
land ; and that the people of this land 
receive you honorably and reverence 
you as their lord, the rights of their 
Churches still remaining inviolate, and 
reserving to St. Peter the annual pen- 
sion of one penny from every house. 

" If, then, you be resolved to carry the 
design you have conceived into effectual 
execution, study to form this nation to 
virtuous manners, and labor by yourself, 
and others whom you shall judge meet 
for this work, In faith, word, and life, 
that the Church may be there adorned, 
that the religion of the Christian faith 
may be planted and grow up, and that 
all things pertaining to the honor of 
God and the salvation of souls be so 
ordered that you may be entitled to the 
fullness of eternal reward from God, and 
obtain a glorious crown on earth through- 
out all ages." 



144 The Great Conflict, 

" This bull, thus framed," says Le- 
land, "was presented to King Henry, 
together with a ring, the token of his 
investiture, as rightful sovereign of Ire- 
land." 

By this piece of pious bombast was Ire- 
land brought under the English crown. 
Poor Ireland still hugs the bond and 
hates the bondage ; and she must groan 
under it till she goes to the root of the 
matter, and frees herself from her real 
bane, and cause of all her sufferings 
and degradation — Romanism ; freed from 
that, English domination will soon van- 
ish. 

TRANSFER OF THE BRITISH CROWN TO THE 
POPE. 

Innocent III., who came to the Papal 
throne in A. D. 1194, excommunicated 
King John, sirnamed Lackland, and de- 
posed him for resisting the Pope's will 
in the election of one of his favorites, 



As Delifieated in History, 145 

Cardinal Langton, to the vacant See of 
Canterbury as archbishop. John refused 
to acknowledge Langton. The Pope 
put his kingdom under interdict, annulled 
the oath of allegiance of his subjects, 
and commissioned the king of France to 
invade England and annex it to his own 
realm. 

"John had to submit, and, in order to 
remove the interdict," in the presence of 
Pundulf, the Pope's legate, in the Church 
of the Templars, the king, surrounded 
by the prelates, barons, and knights, took, 
in the usual manner, an oath of fealty to 
the Pope. At the same time, to com- 
plete the transaction of this extraordi- 
nary day. May 15, A. D. 12 13, he put into 
the hands of the Pope's legate a charter 
subscribed by himself, one archbishop, 
nine earls, and two barons. This instru- 
ment testified that the king, as an atone- 
ment for his offenses against God and 

the Church, had determined to humble 
10 



146 The Great Conflict, 

himself In imitation of Him who, for 
our sake, had humbled himself even 
unto death ; that he had, therefore, not 
through fear or force, but of his own 
free will, and with the unanimous con- 
sent of his barons, granted to God, to 
the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to 
Pope Innocent and Innocent's rightful 
successors, the kingdom of England and 
Ireland, to be held by him, and of the 
Roman Church in fee, by the annual 
rent of one thousand marks, with the 
reservations to himself and his heirs of 
the administration of justice and the 
peculiar rights of the crown." * 

The crowns of England, France, Ger- 
many, Italy, and all the nations of Chris- 
tendom, were held at the Pope's dis- 
posal. Is not this the horn with the 
triple crown, " more stout than his fel- 
lows," " speaking great words against 
the Most High — the beast that has all 

* " Triple Crown," p. 268. 



^ As Delineated in History, 147 

the power of the first beast, and reigns 
over the kings of the earth ? " * Does 
not the Papacy alone, of all other pow- 
ers on earth, stand convicted, by its his- 
tory, of this charge brought by the 
prophets of God against the Apostasy? 



148 The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER IX. 

FOURTH HE SITS IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD. 

THE Blasphemous Assumptions of 
THE Papacy. The Pope not only 
rules as temporal sovereign over the 
kings of the earth, setting up one and 
deposing another, with the authority of 
God, and claims the same prerogative 
yet, as the last allocution of the present 
Pope, Pius IX., shows most conclusively, 
but he sits supreme in the spiritual tem- 
ple of God. The Papacy professes to be 
Christ's vicegerent on earth, to manage 
God's affairs among men, not only in the 
State, but in the Church; to hold the 
keys of death and hell ; to anathematize, 
excommunicate, and consign to hell ; to 
remit sin and pledge heaven, " exalting 
itself above all that is called God." 



As Delineated in Histoiy, 149 

"It changes times and laws and sea- 
sons." It substitutes for the true an- 
other Gospel, another way of salvation. 

To perpetuate and keep the race pure, 
God in his infinite benevolence instituted 
marriage in Eden ; creating them male 
and female, he stamped his law irrevoca- 
ble in the nature of the race. To make 
men superlatively pure and holy, the 
Pope revokes the law and forbids to 
marry. God gave meats for food, " to be 
received with thanksgiving," an emotion 
of soul that elevates into fellowship with 
God. To work up into a most holy 
state by will-work and worship, the Pope 
commands to abstain from meats, and 
multiplies fasts. 

God commands all men every-where to 
repent and believe in Jesus. The Pope 
commands confession to a priest, and to 
do penance as a meritorious way of sal- 
vation. 

God declares there is but one Medi- 



150 The Great Conflict, 

ator, Jesus the righteous. The Pope 
has canonized and made many interces- 
sors, and commands the worship of 
saints and images, and adoration to him- 
self as the infallible expounder and ex- 
pression of God's will. 

God regards the reason, conscience, 
and FREE WILL of man made in his own 
image, and through them manifests him- 
self to the soul. The Pope regards 
neither, but commands a blind faith in 
his own infallibility and unerring com- 
mands. All these blasphemous assump- 
tions, and many more, are too patent to 
require the historical day and date of 
the papal bulls promulgating them. 
An indelible mark of the antichrist so 
plain that he who runs may read it. 

FIFTH THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOM- 
INATIONS OF THE EARTH. 

The very laws of the Papacy in defi- 
ance of and in reversal of God's laws, 



As Delineated in History, 151 

could but work out their legitimate and 
baneful results. Many of the Popes, a 
large share of the priesthood, and many 
of the high dignitaries of the Romish 
Church, through the dark ages and in 
the dark nations, under the almost exclu- 
sive sway of Romanism, even in this day, 
have been and are notorious for their 
debaucheries and licentious lives. Chas- 
tity among popes, cardinals, bishops, and 
priests, and kings and princes Roman, 
at one time was almost unknown. Fe- 
male virtue in queens, princesses, concu- 
bines, and female retainers of popes, 
cardinals, and priests, as little known. 
Exceptions there were in the worst of 
times, but even these more generally 
were found among the dissentients from 
Rome. But with all this notorious cor- 
ruption of individual lives, I apprehend 
this characteristic is more strictly appli- 
cable to the false principles of govern- 
ment lying at the very foundation of the 



152 The Great Conflict, 

system. "She has committed fornica- 
tion, and lived deliciously with the kings 
of the earth." She professes to be the 
spouse of Christ — a spiritual kingdom ; 
but she has disregarded utterly the laws 
and principles of his spiritual reign in 
and over the hearts of men ; and in the 
unhallowed union of Church and State, 
(in all the past nature and condition of 
the State,) prostituted herself to the 
BEAST, or earthly powers in Government, 
and adopted its principles and practices 
to subdue and govern the world ; and 
KINGCRAFT and PRIESTCRAFT in combi- 
nation have at one time ruled the world, 
and at another the wily harlot has out- 
witted the craft of her lovers and sup- 
porters, and ruled alone over them and 
the world too. We need only to quote 
a few passages of her history to verify 
these assertions. 

Says Sir James Stephen (of whom it 
is ^^ic}, " He has more completely mas- 



As Delineated in History. 153 

tered the subject, as to research, than 
any other Protestant writer,") in an ar- 
ticle in the " Edinburgh Review " of 
April, 1845 * " Except in the annals of 
Eastern despots, no parallel can be found 
for the disasters of the Papacy dur- 
ing the century and a half which fol- 
lowed the extinction of the Carlo- 
vingian dynasty. Of the twenty-four 
popes who during that period ascended 
the apostolic throne, two were mur- 
dered, five were driven into exile, four 
were deposed, and three resigned their 
hazardous dignity. Some of these vicars 
of Christ were raised to that awful pre- 
eminence by arms, and some by money. 
Two received it from the hands of 
princely courtesans ; one was self-ap- 
pointed. A well-filled purse purchased 
one papal abdication, the promise of a 
fair bride another. One of these holy 
fathers pillaged the treasury and fled 
with the spoils, returned to Rome, ejected 



154 The Great Conflict, 

his substitute, and mutilated him in a 
manner too revolting for description. 
In one page of this dismal history we 
read of the disinterred corpse of a former 
Pope brought before his successor to 
receive a retrospective sentence of depo- 
sition ; and in the next we find the judge 
himself undergoing the same posthu- 
mous condemnation, though without the 
same filthy ceremonial. Of these heirs 
of St. Peter, one entered on his infal- 
libility in his eighteenth year, and one 
before he had seen his twelfth summer. 
One again took to himself a coadjutor, 
that he might command in person such 
legions as Rome then sent into the field. 
Another, Judas-like, agreed, for certain 
pieces of silver, to recognize the Pa- 
triarch of Constantinople as Universal 
Bishop. All sacred things had become 
venal. Crime and debauchery held revel 
in the Vatican, while the af^icted Church, 
wedded at once to three husbands, (such 



As Delineated in History. 155 

was the language of the times,) witnessed 
the celebration of as many rival masses 
in the metropolis of Christendom." 

The eminent Roman Catholic histo- 
rian, Du Pin, quotes from Cardinal Ba- 
ronius : " At that time," (the tenth cen- 
tury,) exclaims the cardinal, " how de- 
formed, how frightful was the face of the 
Church of Rome ! The Holy See was 
fallen under the tyranny of two loose 
and disorderly women, who placed and 
displaced bishops as their humors led 
them on ; and, what I tremble to think 
and speak of, they placed their gallants 
upon St. Peter's chair, who did not 
deserve the name of popes. For who 
dares say that these infamous persons, 
who intruded without any form of jus- 
tice, were lawful popes ?" etc. "In such 
terms as these," says Du Pin, " does this 
cardinal, who cannot be supposed to be 
an enemy of the Church of Rome, la- 
ment its sad state during the tenth cen- 



156 The Great Conflict, 

tury." Moshelm says of this period : 
" That the history of the Roman pontiffs 
of this century is a history of monsters, 
a record of the most atrocious villainies 
and crimes, is acknowledged by all the 
best writers, and even by the advocates 
of the papacy," in proof of which state- 
ment his translator, Murdock, quotes 
largely from Cardinal Baronius. 

" About the commencement of the 
tenth century almost the whole power 
and influence in Rome was concentrated 
in the hands of three notorious and 
abandoned courtesans — Theodora, and 
her two daughters, Marozia and The- 
odora. This state. of things arose from 
the almost unbounded influence of the 
Tuscan party in Rome, and the power 
of these women over the chiefs of this 
party. Morazia cohabited with Albert, 
a powerful count of Tuscany, and had a 
son, named Alberic; she also had anoth- 
er son by his holiness Pope Sergius III., 



As Delineated in History. 157 

named John, who came to the papal 
throne A. D. 904. This bastard son of 
Serglus was afterward raised to the Pa- 
pacy, through the influence of his licen- 
tious mother, as Pope John XI. Even 
the Cardinal Baronius confesses that 
Pope Sergius was the slave of every 
vice, and the most wicked of men. 

"John, first deacon, and afterward 
Bishop of Ravenna, was engaged or 
drawn into a criminal intrigue with 
Theodora, the younger, that she might 
bring him from Ravenna to Rome, where 
she resided, upon the death of Pope 
Lando, A. D. 914. She had sufficient in- 
fluence to raise him to the papal throne, 
to facilitate her adulterous intercourse. 

" Pope John XII. was the nephew of 
John XL, the bastard. Such were his 
shameful and open debaucheries that, 
on the general complaint of people and 
clergy, the Emperor Otho ordered a 
trial of the Pope. In Otho's letteY, or 



158 The Great Conflict, 

citation, he says : * You are charged 
with such obscenities as would make us 
blush were they said of a stage-player. 
I shall mention to you a few of the 
crimes laid to your charge, for it would 
require a whole day to enumerate them 
all. Know, then, that you are accused 
not by some few, but by all the clergy 
as well as the laity, of murder^ perjury^ 
sacrilege^ and incest with your own sis- 
ters, etc. We therefore entreat you to 
come and clear yourself of these imputa- 
tions.' To this letter his Holiness re- 
turned the following laconic answer : 

"'John, servant of the servants of 
God, to all bishops. We hear that you 
want to make another Pope. If that is 
your design, / excommunicate you all in 
the name of the Almighty, that you may 
not have it in your power to ordain any 
other ^ or even to celebrate mass! 

" The emperor and his council, how- 
ever, notwithstanding this bull, ventured 



Jis Delineated in History. 159 

to disregard both the doctrine of papal 
infallibility and the apostolic succession 
of John, and deposed him. On the ap- 
proach of the emperor he had fled from 
Rome, but returned again after Otho's 
departure, and, in concert with his female 
favorites and several persons of rank, 
compelled his successor to fly from a 
conspiracy to murder him, to the protec- 
tion of the emperor. He committed 
frightful enormities on some of the bish- 
ops and clergy who had appeared against 
him. The triumphs of this enormous 
villain, however, were but short. Soon 
after he was caught in bed with a mar- 
ried woman and killed on the spot, 
some Romish authors say by the devil, 
but probably by the husband in dis- 
guise. 

These Popes are still on the cata- 
logue as regular links in the apostolic 
succession from St. Peter. 

*" Bowling's History," pp. 217-219. 



i6o The Great Conflict, 

So generally corrupt were the priest- 
hood under this debauching, lawless 
system of Roman celibacy that these 
cases were by no means exceptional. 
" In the tenth and eleventh centuries 
concubinage was openly practiced by 
the clergy, and was regarded by Popes 
and prelates as a far less crime than to 
marry a wife. * Any person, clergyman 
or layman, according to the Council of 
Toledo in its seventeenth canon, who 
has not a wife, but a concubine, is not to 
be repelled from the communion if he be 
contented with one.' And his holiness^ 
Pope Leo, confirmed the action of the 
Council of Toledo and this act of the 
Spanish prelacy. This action was con- 
firmed as a part of the canon law of the 
Church by Pope Gregory XIII. For- 
nication, therefore, is sanctioned by a 
Spanish council, a Roman pontiff, and 
a canon law of the Romish Church, 
and so not only tolerated by Pope, bish- 



As Delineated in History, i6i 

ops, and clergy, but preferred to matri- 
mony,""^ as the less sin, if sin at all. 
This the LAW of the " mother of harlots, 
the abomination of the earth!" How 
can you change an Infallible law of an 
infallible Church under the guidance of 
infallible Popes ? O ye virtuous priests 
and bishops, as I have no doubt some 
of you really are, come out of her, as 
Father Hyacinthe has done, and obey 
God's law ! 

HER POLITICAL HARLOTRY. 

In her political intrigues with the 
kings and potentates of earthly govern- 
ments we have another class of her 
abominations. 

Hlldebrand, as Pope Gregory VIl.j 
ascended the throne In A. D. 1073 as a 
reformer. The haughty spirit of this 
Pope was exhibited in a previous chap- 
ter, in his treatment of Henry IV. of 

* " Bowling's History/' p. 224. 



1 62 The Great Conflict, 

Germany. The barons and people of 
Henry IV. could not stand the insult to 
their monarch ; war was declared, Rome 
taken, and Gregory dethroned, but again 
regained the papal throne. So the vicar 
of Christ, in his kingdom not of this 
world, is mixed up with the kings of earth 
in wars and the intrigues of an earthly 
kingdom ; derives his chief glory and 
greatness in his final ascendency and tri- 
umphs over them all, till all crowns are 
held in vassalage to him. Besides that 
of Germany, he bestowed the crown of 
Russia, exacting an oath of fealty from 
the prince on whose brow he placed it. 
He declared the king of Poland de- 
prived of his authority, and decreed that 
the country should no longer be a re- 
gal realm. He enjoined an act of abdi- 
cation on the Greek Emperor. He 
claimed Hungary, Sardinia, and Dal- 
matia as dependent on the Roman See. 
He admonished Spain that St. Peter 



As Delineated in History. 163 

was the supreme lord of her sons and her 
soil, and that it would be better for her 
to fall into the hands of the Saracens 
than cease to do homage to the vicar of 
Christ. He exacted tribute from the 
Duke of Bohemia. 

"From Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, 
who lived in familiar and unimpugned 
intercourse with him, he received an 
assignment of dominions, and others 
that might come to her in reversion — 
the most magnificent grant ever made 
to the chair of St. Peter." * 

" Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, father 
of the Countess Matilda, and by far the 
greatest prince in Italy, was flogged 
before the altar by an abbot for selling 
benefices. The offense was much more 
common than the punishment, but the 
two combined furnish a good specimen 
of the eleventh century." f 

* "Triple Crown," p. 245. 

t " Hallam's Middle Ages," chap, viii, note. 



164 The Great Conflict, 

Nor was the condition and character 
of the Papacy improved in the following 
centuries. " The mother of harlots " 
waxed worse and worse. Alexander VI. 
ascended the papal throne A. D. 1492. 
This bachelor Pope had sons and daugh- 
ters, and soon became ambitious to 
establish a hereditary succession on the 
throne; to marry off and establish his 
natural children. "The efforts of this 
Pope in this direction affected the pol- 
itics of all Europe." Says Ranke of this 
Pope, in his " History of the Popes :" " His 
chief aim, during his whole life, had 
been to gratify to the utmost his love 
of ease, his sensuality, and his ambition." 
His son, Caesar Borgia, a monster of 
wickedness, entered into the views of 
his father, but for himself alone. " He 
had caused his own brother, who stood 
in his way, to be murdered and thrown 
into the Tiber." " His brother-in-law was 
attacked and stabbed on the steps of the 



As Delineated in History, 165 

palace by his order." The wounded man 
was nursed by his wife and sister, who 
cooked his food themselves to secure 
him from poison. 

The Pope had set a guard before his 
house to protect his son-in-law from his 
son. " Caesar Borgia, however, burst 
into his chamber, drove out his wife 
and sister, called an executioner, and 
commanded the unfortunate prince to 
be strangled." "He killed Peroto, Alex- 
ander's favorite, while clinging to his 
patron, and sheltered by the pontifical 
mantle. The Pope's face was sprinkled 
with his blood." 

" Rome trembled at his name. Caesar 
wanted money and had enemies ; every 
night murdered bodies were found in 
the streets. Men lived in seclusion and 
silence ; there was none who did not 
fear his turn would come. Those whom 
force could not reach were taken off by 
poison." " There is a perfection in de- 



1 66 The Great Conflict, 

pravity. Many of the sons and nephews 
of Popes attempted similar things, but 
none ever approached Caesar's bad emi- 
nence ; he was a virtuoso in crime." 

" It is but too certain that Alexander 
once meditated taking off one of the 
richest of his cardinals by poison ; his 
intended victim, however, contrived, by 
means of presents, promises, and prayers, 
to gain over his head cook, and the dish 
which was prepared for the cardinal was 
placed before the Pope. He died of the 
poison he had destined for another."* 
With him died the prospect of heredi- 
tary succession to his family. 

Such have been many of the Holy Fa- 
thers and their households ; surely not 
ensamples for the flock ! poor proofs of 
papal infallibility or the holiness of cleri- 
cal celibacy ! a terribly muddy channel 
for the flow of apostolic succession. 

* Ranke's " History of the Popes," vol, i, pp. 48-50, 
Translated by Sarah Austin. 



As Delineated in History. 167 

Such has been the system not only 
cropping out here and there in individ- 
ual corruptions, but as a system in es- 
sence, in its intrigues and carnal policies, 
in its struggles for power with the kings 
and potentates of earth. She has lived 
deliciously with them, conformed to 
them in rivalry for earthly glory and 
luxuries and power. 



ROME'S LYING WONDERS AND DECEPTIVE 
ARTS. 

Add to all this her craft and " lying 
wonders, and deceivableness of unright- 
eousness," by which she still deludes and 
holds sway over her ignorant votaries, 
and you have all the characteristics of 
the " great whore, the mother of har- 
lots." Her fictitious lives of pretended 
saints, too puerile for the credence of half 
grown children ; her pretended miracles 
of the winking and weeping picture of 



t68 The Great Conflict, 

the Virgin Mary ; the holy house at 
Loretto, in which the Virgin was born, 
its holy porringer, in which the infant 
Jesus received his pap, and the veritable 
vail of the Virgin Mary, all carried by 
angels through the air from Nazareth to 
Loretto, and duly certified by the priests 
to the awe-stricken and adoring votaries ; 
the liquefaction of the blood of St Janua- 
rius ; the pieces of the wood of the 
veritable cross on which Christ died, 
enough of them in the Roman world to 
more than freight a thousand-ton ship ; 
the relics or bones of dead saints, certi- 
fied by popes and bishops to be the ver- 
itable bones of the martyrs ; the letter 
of St. Peter from heaven through 
Pope Stephen to King Pepin — such are 
the cunning sorceries of the harlot. Such 
was she in her fascinations through the 
dark ages of stupid ignorance, and such 
she is yet in the nineteenth century. 
Witness the holy coat of Treves, exhib- 



As Delineated in History. 169 

ited by Arnold, Bishop of Treves, and 
his clergy, in solemn pomp and proces- 
sion, as the veritable seamless coat of 
Jesus, in the year 1844; and the wide- 
spread controversy in Germany, under 
the lead of John Ronge, a Roman Cath- 
olic priest, against the lying decep- 
tion of the bishop. Look into our own 
enlightened America. Witness the Rt. 
Rev. Dr. Bayley, Bishop of Newark, in 
New Jersey, heading a solemn procession, 
in presence of two thousand people, into 
the Church of the Virgin in Hobo- 
ken, on Sunday, June i, 1856, to conse- 
crate that church by a deposit under 
the altar of somebody's bones, dug up 
somewhere near Rome, in Italy, certified 
by Pope Pius IX. to be, and blessed as 
the veritable bones of St. Quietus, and 
a vase of his blood, given as a special 
grace by his holiness the Pope to this 
highly favored Church in America. See 
"Dowling's History" (pages 792-794,) 



170 The Great Conflict, 

for the somewhat lengthy, solemn, and 
eloquent speech of Bishop Bayley on 
that momentous occasion. I wonder if 
the bishop could keep a sober face next 
day on meeting any of his clergy ? 
Were Bishop Bayley and his clergy (in- 
telligent, scholarly men, or ought to be) 
honest on that day ? His ignorant Irish 
auditors were, doubtless, and swallowed 
all down as veritable truth, and placed 
themselves under the powerful protec- 
tion of St. Quietus, or St. Quietus' or 
somebody's bones. 

Still later, on the i6th of May, 1874, 
witness the departure from our shores, 
from New York, of one hundred dev- 
otees, religious pilgrims, composed of 
grave Roman bishops, seven or eight 
vicar-generals, at least one judge of an 
American court, professors in Roman 
colleges, and other very respectable citi- 
zens, with their costly offerings to the 
shrine of Lourdes, in France, made 



As Delineated in History. 171 

sacred by the story that a little French 
peasant girl, aged fourteen, named Ber- 
nedette Soubirous, had an apparition, or 
saw a beautiful, angel-like virgin in a 
grotto at the foot of the Pyrenees, on 
the nth of February, 1858, at eleven 
o'clock in the forenoon. While two lit- 
tle girls were with her, she alone had the 
vision. These visions were repeated for 
fifteen successive days, with one excep- 
tion, often in the presence of many peo- 
ple, but none of them could see any 
thing except the ecstatic appearance of 
the little French maid. On the 25th of 
March, the festival of the Annunciation, 
on the fourth entreaty of the little maid 
for the name of her visitor, it was an- 
nounced : " I AM THE Immaculate Con- 
ception." Such is the story. It is told in 
skillful, beautiful, and glowing terms, and 
is very fascinating to young imaginative 
minds. A fountain gradually burst forth 
from the spot, and its healing waters 



172 The Great Conflict, 

have already, according to the story, per- 
formed many miraculous cures all over 
the world. The Bishop of Tarbes, in 
whose bishopric is Lourdes, appointed 
" a commission of prudent and learned 
men to investigate the matter," who, 
" after four years' search into the mira- 
cles and other statements, have placed 
the authenticity of the facts beyond all 
question." " In a brief, of September 4, 
1869, Pope Pius IX. confirmed the de- 
cision of the bishop. This vision, next 
to the Pope's infallibility, is quoted as a 
chief indisputable proof of the truth 
of the dogma of "The Immaculate 
Conception." One hundred educated 
Americans have crossed the Atlantic 
repeating the ten days' novenas, or 
prayers, to " our Blessed Lady of Lour- 
des"—" The Immaculate Conception," to 
visit and do homage at her shrine. 

Now say, has the enchanting harlot 
remitted any of her fascinating arts, her 



As Delineated in History. 173 

deceptive charms, her lying miraculous 
wonders and allurements, or lost any 
power over her real votaries in the light 
of the nineteenth century, and in this 
enlightened land — the only land in which 
Pius IX. says he is really Pope ? 

Yet Protestants there are silly enough 
to school their daughters and sons in 
institutions under such professors, and 
under her fascinations ; and doctors of 
divinity there are who advocate yielding 
to her demand to take the Bible out of 
our national system of education. 

Could the prophetic delineation, " the 
mother of harlots, the abomination of 
the whole earth," the mistress of " signs 
and lying wonders and all deceivableness 
of unrighteousness," be more accurately 
fulfilled than by the well-authenticated 
history of the papacy? This indelible 
mark is fixed on her frontlets. An hon- 
est jury before the testimony could but 
bring in the verdict, guilty. 



174 The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER X. 

SIXTH DRUNKEN WITH THE BLOOD OF 

THE SAINTS. 

"^ T HAS WORN OUT THE SAINTS OF 



I 



THE Most High — drunken with 

THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS OF JeSUS. 

" About A. D. 660, a new sect arose in 
the East named ' Paulicians.' " They 
seem to have been evangelical Christians, 
and rejected altogether image-worship, 
which began to prevail early in the 
eighth century in the East, and extended 
finally over^ the West. This growing 
corruption of the Roman Church was 
approved and adopted as one of its doc- 
trines by the second Council of Nice, 
called, probably, for that purpose by the 
Empress Irene herself, a bigoted image 
worshiper, A. D. 784. This inhuman 
monster, who had probably taken off her 



As Delineated m History, 175 

husband, the Emperor Leo IV., by poi- 
son, who was an opposer of image-wor- 
ship, and caused the eyes of her son, 
Constantine VI., also an opposer, to be 
put out, to render him incapable of the 
throne, was the fit instrument of Pope 
Adrian to restore image-worship, and 
has been highly praised for her piety 
and zeal by Cardinal Baronius, and even 
her crimes commended, as they were for 
the interests of the Church. 

It was not long before a bitter perse- 
cution fell upon the Paulicians. Theo- 
dora was regent, or acting empress, of 
the Eastern Empire during the minority 
of her son, Michael III., who came to 
the throne A. D. 842. She also was a 
bigoted image worshiper ; " and although 
the persecutions of this sect had experi- 
enced some intermissions, under her 
reign they broke out afresh. She had 
established image worship, and exerted 
herself beyond any of her predecessors 



176 The Great Conflict, 

against the Paullcians. Her inquisi- 
tors ransacked Lesser Asia in search of 
them ; and she is computed to have 
killed by the gibbet, by fire, and by the 
sword, a hundred thousand persons."* 

It may be inquired. What had the 
Papacy to do with this ? 

" Her cruelties and superstitions de- 
served the applause of Nicolas, who be- 
came Pope in A. D. 858. In a letter he 
highly approves her conduct, and ad- 
mires her on account of her implicit 
obedience to the Holy See. 'She re- 
solved,' says the historian of the Em- 
peror Michael, 'to bring the Paulicians 
to the true faith or cut them all off, root 
and branch.' ' Pursuant to that resolu- 
tion, she sent her noblemen and magis- 
trates into the provinces of the empire, 
and by them those unhappy wretches 
were crucified, some put to the sword, 
and some thrown into the sea and 

* Milner's " History of the Church." vol. i, p. 573. 



As Delifieated in History, 177 

drowned.' ' The Pope, alluding to this 
bloody massacre, in the same letter 
commends Theodora for the manly vigor 
she exerted, ' the Lord co-operating,' as 
he blasphemously adds, ' against obsti- 
nate and incorrigible heretics.' ' Why 
sol he adds, * but because you followed the 
directions of the Apostolic See! " * 

THE INQUISITION. 

The Inquisition was established by 
Pope Gregory IX., A. D. 1233; thrown 
open and broken up by Napoleon Bona- 
parte, A. D. 1808, but re-established in 
the States of the Church, Tuscany, and 
Sardinia, A. D. 18 14. In the archives 
of this institution have been found the 
secret plans for the massacre of the 
Waldenses in A. D. 1605 and 1620, and 
documents relative to the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew's day in France, Au- 
gust 24, 1572. In A. D. 1 48 1 two hun- 

* Milner's "History of the Church," vol. i, p. 574. 
12 



178 The Great Conflict, 

dred and ninety-eight, condemned as 
heretics by the Inquisition, were burned 
at the stake in Seville, Spain, and two 
thousand in other parts of Andalusia, 
and seventeen thousand were subjected 
to various and rigorous penalties. 

From A. D. 1483 to 1498, fifteen years, 
eight thousand and eight hundred suf- 
fered martyrdom under various torments 
in Spain alone. From A. D. 1499 to 
1506, seven years, the inquisitor-gen- 
eral condemned to the flames one thou- 
sand six hundred and sixty -four. From 
A. D. 1507 to 15 1 7, ten years, the car- 
dinal inquisitor-general, Ximenes, con- 
demned to death two thousand five hun- 
dred and thirty-six. From A. D. 1483 
to 1808, three hundred and twenty five 
years, thirty -one thousand nine hundred 
and twelve were burned at the stake, and 
seventeen thousand six hundred and 
fifty-nine, who had the temerity to fly 
and make their escape, were burned in 



As Delineated in History. 179 

effigy; two hundred and ninety-one 
thousand four hundred and fifty were 
subjected to various rigorous punish- 
ments for worshiping God according to 
the dictates of their own consciences, 
but not in accordance with Rome. The 
number martyred in Portugal, and in 
Spanish and Portuguese colonies, Sicily 
and Sardinia, cannot be ascertained, 
though it is known to be large. In En- 
gland, during bloody Mary's reign, two 
hundred and eighty-eight were burned 
at the stake. Some authors estimate 
"that the Inquisition has destroyed, by 
various tortures, one hundred and fifty 
thousand lives within thirty years." 

The Inquisition at Rome continued 
in full operation till the declaration of 
the Roman Republic, February 9, 1849. 
The first act of the Constituent Assem- 
bly was the abolition of the Inquisition. 
It was thrown open to public gaze, with 
its hall of judgment, its instruments of 



i8o The Great Conflict, 

torture, and its evidences of dark and 
foul murder. " The -//(^/j/ Inquisition is 
situated under the very shadows of the 
dome of St. Peter's Cathedral. Its ' cham- 
ber of archives/ filled with voluminous 
records, and papers, and correspondence, 
with collateral branches in both hemi- 
spheres, is immense. On the third floor, 
over a certain door, is inscribed, * Speak 
to the first inquisitor I Over another, 
'Nobody enters this chamber except on 
pain of exco7nmunication! Over another, 
opposite to the first, is inscribed, 'Speak 
to the second inquisitor^. That chamber 
was the solemn hall of judgment, or doom- 
room. ' Upon opening the last-named 
door a trap door was exposed over a 
broad cylindrical pit eighty feet deep, 
and so ingeniously provided with pro- 
jecting knives and cutlasses that the 
bodies of the victims must have been 
horribly mangled in the descent. At 
the bottom of this abyss quantities of 



As Delineated in History. i8i 

hair and beds of moldering bones re- 
mained." " In another part of the build- 
ing was an entrance to a vault, which 
seemed to pass beneath the whole pal- 
ace, in which lay heaps of human bones 
of both sexes, scattered over the floor." 
" Perhaps," says an eye-witness of these 
horrors, " the unfortunate nun who was 
found in her cell when the Republic 
threw open the doors of this prison- 
house of death might tell us something 
that would aid in explaining these 
discoveries." " Other prisoners were re- 
leased from these dungeons ; one, a 
bishop, who had been in his cell twenty- 
five years." Another, a monk from a 
republic in South America, was released 
from a twelve years' imprisonment in the 
Convent of Aracoeli, and, when brought 
before the National Assembly, declared 
that he had not the most distant idea 
what he was imprisoned for, but had 
given up all hope of ever being released." 



1 82 The Great Conflict, 

When, in 1850, five months afterward, 
the army of the French RepubHc, un- 
der the presidency of Louis Napoleon, 
conquered Rome, broke up the Roman 
RepubHc, and restored Pope Pius IX., 
the Inquisition was again restored. It 
would be easy to prove that these Satanic 
cruelties toward the saints of the Most 
High are not the effects of here and 
there a tyrannical Pope, but in accord- 
ance with, and under the authority and 
commands of, the canon law of the 
Romish Church, ever unchangeably the 
same, except under surrounding circum- 
stances and restraints not under her 
control. Who knows what goes on in 
the convents and nunneries of England 
and the United States } 

In the days when the Holy Inquisition, 
this Romish court of torture and mur- 
der, was in its glory with full powers, the 
common mode of summoning its victims 
was by the officers of the Inquisition, 



As Delineated in History. 183 

denominated familiaries, or spies, who, 
generally in the dead of night, driving 
up in a carriage, knock at a door. Some 
one from the house inquires from an 
opened window, " Who is there ? " The 
reply is the terrible words, " The Holy 
Inquisitionr Perhaps the inquirer is the 
father of an only and beloved daughter, 
and in terror hears the name and the 
command to deliver up that daughter to 
the Holy Inquisitio7i ; or it may be wife, 
or son, or father. Not a question must 
be asked, not a murmur must escape the 
lips, on pain of a like terrible fate. She 
is hurried into the carriage and to the 
terrible court, without friend, or adviser, 
or counsel, and within those horrid prison 
walls not a shriek or groan or sigh of 
agony must escape the lips of the sus- 
pected or accused. Perhaps some un- 
guarded word has escaped the lips against 
idolatry, or something has been learned 
or suspected through the confessional. 



184 The Great Conflict, 

" The next day the bereaved family- 
go into mourning for the lost, as one 
dead, with the dismal uncertainty of 
what torture, or death, or prison-life, or 
doom awaited the loved one, but must 
conceal tears of grief to avoid the same 
terrible fate." Rome is the grim mur- 
deress, " that wears out the saints of the 
Most High." 

But Rome has not been contented 
with these individual murders, under 
these sanctimonious forms of trial by 
this high court of the Inquisition, through 
ingenious methods of torture, with Sa- 
tanic cruelty to extort confessions or 
recantations from the defenseless vic- 
tim ; she has delighted in the wholesale 
slaughter of the followers of Jesus. 

SLAUGHTER OF THE ALBIGENSES AND WAL- 
DENSES. 

Under the reign and bulls of Pope 
Innocent III., early in the thirteenth 



As Delineated in History. 185 

century, that terrible crusade against the 
Waldenses and Albigenses, in the south 
of France, was preached through Eu- 
rope, and an army of from three to five 
hundred thousand fierce, fanatical, and 
brutal soldiery were enlisted in the 
service of the Papacy, under a solemn 
league and covenant, to exterminate 
heretics. Count Raimond VI., of Tou- 
louse, a province in the south of France, 
though a bigoted Catholic, either from 
policy or humanity, could not consent to 
shed the blood of his best and innocent 
subjects, and, although he signed the pa- 
pal agreement in this league, was perse- 
cuted and publicly flogged on the bare 
back by an abbot, and afterward excom- 
municated, for his little zeal in the bloody 
work. (Yet Rome never put heretics to 
death ; it is the civil power, for trans- 
gressing the civil law.) After this 
humiliation of Raimond, his nephew, 
Roger, Viscount of Bazieres, applied to 



1 86 The Great Conflict, 

the Pope's legate, offering to make some 
humiliating concessions, but being re- 
pelled with haughty scorn, prepared to 
defend, as best he might, Bazieres and 
the stronger fortress of Carcassonne. 
Having placed Bazieres in the best po- 
sition of defense he could make, he 
retired to Carcassonne. The fanatical 
crusaders in great hosts soon appeared 
before Bazieres, about the middle of 
July, A. D. 1209. The bishop of the 
place had previously visited the Pope s 
legate, giving him a list of his flock sus- 
pected of heresy, and then returned and 
exhorted submission to the Pope. 

The brave defenders, the Albigenses, 
made an unexpected sally and onset on 
their enemies, but were repelled with 
great loss by the fanatical multitudes, 
and followed so closely that the besiegers 
found themselves in possession before 
they were themselves aware of it. The 
knights, or leaders of the Romish party, 



As Delineated in History. 187 

becoming aware that they had gained 
the stronghold without a siege or much 
fighting, asked the Pope's legate, Arnold 
Amalric, how they should distinguish 
the heretics from the Catholics. ''Kill 
all ; the Lord will know well those that 
are his]^ was his reply. There were at 
the time about sixty thousand residents, 
and those gathered from the surround- 
ing country, who had taken refuge in the 
city. Of this great multitude " not one 
person, male or female, old or young, 
were spared alive. The city was set on 
fire in various places at once, and the 
next day was a heap of smoking ruins 
over the charred remains of sixty thou- 
sand bodies of its inhabitants ; not a 
house was left. The Viscount Roger 
shut himself up in the stronghold of Car- 
cassonne. The Pope's legate resorted 
to one of those Jesuitical tricks of which 
Rome is the adept. He induced an 
officer of the army, a relative of Roger, 



i88 The Great Conflict, 

to go and induce him, by solemn prom- 
ises of a safe conduct and return, to 
come to the legate to treat for peace. 
The unsuspecting viscount trusted the 
honor of the legate, and suggested 
that a little more lenity toward the Al- 
bigenses would be more likely to draw 
them back into the fold of the Church. 
The treacherous legate replied that the 
inhabitants of Carcassonne could take 
their own course, but it was unnecessary 
that he (Roger) should trouble himself 
about the matter, as he was now a pris- 
oner. He was thrown into prison, and 
died soon after, probably by poison ; in- 
deed, the Pope admits in one of his let- 
ters that he died a violent death.* 

At the loss of their leader the inhab- 
itants were reduced to the greatest dis- 
tress, but, in consequence of a rumor to 
that effect, searched for and discovered 
a subterraneous passage to the strong 

*"Dowling's History," pp. 314-316. 



As Delineated in History. 189 

castle of Cabaret, about three leagues 
distant, and during the night all the in- 
habitants made their escape through 
this gloomy way and dispersed them- 
selves throughout the country. The 
besiegers were surprised soon after at 
the utter silence that reigned through 
the city. 

The details of the slaughter, maim- 
ing, and treachery toward those of the 
poor Albigenses who survived in many 
of the castles and cities In the provinces, 
beggars belief. In one Instance one hun- 
dred and forty were consumed together 
on a vast pile of wood gathered for the 
occasion. At the same time the women 
were collected In a building; It was set 
on fire, and those attempting to escape 
through the windows were thrust back 
with the pikes of Rome's soldiers. In 
such scenes abbots and monks, in their 
zeal for religion, greatly rejoiced. Such 
were the tender mercies of the professed 



iQO The Great Conflict, 

spouse of Christ In her drunkenness 
with the blood of the saints. 

About A. D. 1400 a sudden and vio- 
lent outrage was committed upon the 
Waldenses inhabiting the valley of Pra- 
gela, in Piedmont. The Romish party 
residing in the neighborhood suddenly 
attacked them in the month of Decem- 
ber. The surprised Waldenses fled to 
the mountains of the Alps, which were 
covered with snow. Multitudes of them 
were slain by their pursuers, " swift to 
shed blood," on the way. Of those who 
escaped to the mountains, fourscore in- 
fants were found frozen to death during 
one night, and many of the mothers lay 
dead By their sides. 

Nearly a century later, in consequence 
of the ferocious bull of Pope Innocent 
VIII., a fearful persecution was carried 
on against the Waldenses in the valley 
of the Loire and Frasslnetto. The inhab- 
itants fled from the Pope s soldiery, and 



As Delineated in History, 191 

concealed themselves In caves in the 
mountains. Their hiding places were 
discovered, and large quantities of com- 
bustibles were placed at the mouths of 
the caves and set on fire. Four hundred 
children were suffocated in their cradles, 
or in the arms of their dead mothers; 
while multitudes, to escape death in 
so terrible a form, precipitated them- 
selves from these caverns to the rocks 
below, and were dashed in pieces, or, 
escaping death in this form, they were 
slaughtered by the brutal soldiery. More 
than three thousand men, women, and 
children perished in this persecution, 
so that the Waldenses of these valleys 
were exterminated. 

In A. D. 1545 the Waldenses in the 
south of France were subjected to a 
fearful persecution and slaughter, and 
their country was left desolate. In 
A. D. 1560 the Waldenses in Calabria, 
in the south of Italy, were slaughtered 



192 The Great Conflict, 

like sheep, according to the Romish his- 
torian, after they had surrendered to 
their merciless captors. The doctrine 
and practice has been the extermina- 
tion of heretics. > 

In A. D. 1686, in the persecution of 
the Waldenses, fourteen thousand were 
thrown into prisons, eleven thousand of 
whom died in four months. 

It is estimated that fifty thousand 
Hussites perished in the religious wars 
and persecutions against them during the 
reign of Charles V. of Germany, and that 
three hundred thousand Waldenses and 
Albigenses perished In the same way. 

The Duke of Alva boasted that he 
had slain eighteen thousand heretics in 
six months, and that by various modes 
of Satanic and merciless cruelty. He 
has also boasted that in the Nether- 
lands he had> in a few years, put to death 
by the common executioners thirty-six 
thousand. 



As Delineated in History. 193 

MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY. 

But the climax of horrors, of Satanic 
and Romish perfidy and cruelty, at which 
the world did then, and does still, stand 
aghast, was the massacre of St. Barthol- 
omew's day, August 24, 1572; planned 
and cacried out by that dissolute, de- 
bauched, fascinating, artful female mon- 
ster, Catherine de Medici, queen mother 
of the imbecile, miserable Charles IX. of 
France. 

To lull the Protestants into greater 
imagined security, and draw the princi- 
pal men among them into the trap, she 
had promoted a matrimonial alliance 
between her daughter, Princess Marga- 
ret, and Henry IV., of Navarre, a Prot- 
estant prince, and invited the leading 
Protestants to the nuptial feast. 

Amid the gayeties and festivities of 
that occasion, at a concerted signal at 
the hour of midnight, the cold-blooded 

13 



194 The Great Conflict, 

butchery of the Protestants commenced, 
and before daylight eight thousand were 
weltering in their blood in the streets 
and houses of Paris, and thirty thousand 
throughout France before the end of a 
single week ; some say eighty thousand. 
Though the Pope may not have been let 
into the secrets of the plan before its 
execution, he joined in a Te Deum and 
great exultation at the first intelligence, 
and had a medal struck as a memorial 
in honor of the deed. 

May 6, 1576, three years, eight months, 
and twenty-one days after that night of 
horrors, of the slaughter of the witness- 
es, whose dead bodies may have lain 
literally " unburied three days and a half 
in the streets of the great city which is 
called Sodom, where our Lord was cru- 
cified : " at the peace de Mansieres, by 
an edict of the king, Protestants were 
granted a full and free exercise of their 
religion in all parts of France, except 



As Delineated in History, 195 

Paris and twelve miles around ; and 
twenty-five years afterward, by the Edict 
of Nantes, a full toleration of their re- 
ligion. The perfidy and horrors of that 
slaughter sent a thrill through Europe ; 
even Papists stood aghast at it, and be- 
came alarmed at their own victory, and 
the slain and living witnesses towered 
up to heaven in the sight of their ene- 
mies. 

During the wars under the celebrated 
League of the sixteenth century, to ex- 
terminate Protestants, probably more 
than one million Waldenses perished in 
poor deluded, priest-ridden, war-scathed 
France. 

It is estimated that 50,000,000, some 
say 70,000,000, have lost their lives by 
the persecutions and wars of the Papacy 
on Protestants, or dissentients from its 
authority in matters of religion. 

In A. D. 1685, the Edict of Nantes was 
revoked by Louis XIV., and ixova fiveto 



196 The Great Conflict, 

eight hundred thousand Protestants, the 
best blood and conservative element of 
the French nation, fled from France. 
As the direct result, the French Revolu- 
tion and " Reign of Terror " came on in 

1793. 
To all this slaughter of dissentients 

and persecution of Protestants, add the 
slaughter of Jews and Saracens during 
the Crusades and before ; and what lan- 
guage is so terribly true and as the 
VOICE OF God? — " And in her was found 
the blood of prophets and saints, and 
the martyrs of Jesus, and of all that 
were slain upon the earth." Her crimes 
have towered up to heaven ; her punish- 
ment is capital punishment, the irrevo- 
cable decree has gone forth ; it is a sen- 
tence of death to the Roman papacy. 
The SYSTEM is essentially, irredeemably 
Antichrist. The irrevocable doom of 
the system does not necessarily involve 
the destruction of the deluded peoples 



As Delineated in History. 197 

involved in it. The voice of the Al- 
mighty rings through all her dark do- 
minions — " Come out of her, my people, 
and be not partakers of her sins and her 
plagues." 



198 The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER XL 

SEVENTH THE OVERTHROW, OR FINAL 

DESTRUCTION, 

THE INSTRUMENTS OF HER DESTRUC- 
TION. " The horns shall hate her 
and make her desolate and naked, and 
shall eat her flesh and burn her with 
fire." The very beast that has carried her 
shall turn upon her and gore and destroy 
her. Henry VHI., a true horn of the 
beast, and of the nature of the beast, 
early In the sixteenth century quarreled 
with the Pope, not from any religious 
scruples or for conscience' sake, for 
Henry had little of either, although 
" defender of the Romish faith," but 
because his rider would not humor his 
brutish propensities, he took to goring 
her, and threw off the papacy from the 
English nation, and Britain has been the 



As Delineated in Histo7y. 199 

bulwark against papal aggressions ever 
since. She had previously had some 
gorings from some of the emperors of 
Germany ; they had hated her, while 
obliged to carry her. 

The political events in Europe of the 
last thirteen years have been on this 
power as the successive shocks of "the 
great earthquake." The battle of Solfa- 
rino, June 24, 1859, took part of Italy 
from the Pope, and gave it to Victor Em- 
manuel. The battle of Sadowa broke 
up the papal concordat with Austria, so 
that, as the Emperor Joseph said, he 
must either give up the concordat or 
his crown. The revolution in Spain re- 
deemed that nation from papal domina- 
tion, probably for all future time. The 
battle of Sedan, September 2, 1870, made 
the Emperor, Napoleon III., the last 
prop of the temporal power of the 
Papacy, a prisoner of war, and the empire 
was lost to him and the Pope forever. 



200 The Great Conflict, 

She said, " I sit a queen and shall see 
no sorrow;" and in July i8, 1870, the 
Pope declared the dogma of papal infal- 
libility. On the same day Napoleon III. 
declared war against Prussia, and in less 
than two months lost his crown and his 
empire ; and Victor Emmanuel — auspi- 
cious name — marched into Rome, and 
the Pope's temporal power went down 
" like a millstone into the deep, to be 
found no more at all." Where now the 
BEAST that carried her ? There is not a 
horn of it left that is not turned against 
her. No monarch or potentate trembles 
now at the Pope's bulls, or the thunders 
of the Vatican. All the potentates of 
Europe and the world laugh at the puer- 
ile allocutions of the " Vatican prisoner." 
Poor old man ! head of the Roman 
Church, there is not a crowned head in 
Europe so base as to do him hearty 
reverence. The Pope himself says he is 
not Pope except in the United States of 



As Delineated in History. 201 

America. What a contrast to the Papa- 
cy of Leo X ! Could history more ac- 
curately fulfill the prediction ? " They 
shall hate her and make her desolate, 
and burn her with fire." The Popes 
own bitter complaints of the treatment 
of the Papacy by the Governments of 
Europe, set his own seal to the truth of 
this mark of Antichrist. But the end, 
perhaps, is not yet. The present obsti- 
nate struggle going on between the 
Papacy and the civil powers of Europe 
may culminate in a still more marked 
and signal overthrow. 

THE FINAL DESTRUCTION BY GQD'S WORD. 

But the final end and complete con- 
sumption of Antichrist is to be by " the 
spirit of His mouth " — the Word of God 
— the Bible. That has already kindled 
a flame that can never be quenched ; it 
will burn to its utter perdition. 

The discovery and study of the Latin 



202 The Great Conflict, 

Bible by Martin Luther, In the convent 
at Erfurt, early In the sixteenth century, 
enlightened, regenerated, reformed, and 
fired one heart, and through it spread 
that reformation over the continent of 
Europe. The Papacy, though rallying 
occasionally, has been in consumption 
ever since, from which it can never 
recover. 

The art of printing brought to consid- 
erable perfection, during the last half of 
the fifteenth century, several transla- 
tions of the Bible into German during 
the same time and soon after especially 
Luther's translation from the Hebrew 
and Greek of the whole Bible, printed 
complete In A. D. 1534, and multiplied by 
large editions, which fixed the principles 
and spirit of the Reformation In the Ger- 
man heart, consumed Romish supersti- 
tions out of It, awakened a spirit of free- 
dom and independent Inquiry that has 
effectually arrayed the larger share of 



As Delineated in History. 203 

that solid German race, with its lan- 
guage spoken by nearly 56,000,000 peo- 
ple, against Rome for all time ; an irre- 
parable loss to that power in Europe. 
But a far greater loss to that power is 
yet to be noticed. 

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 

The translation of Tyndale's New 
Testament into the English language 
was printed A. D. 1525 ; the translation 
of Coverdale's whole Bible was printed 
A. D. 1535, and placed in all the church- 
es by royal decree in 1536 ; and by royal 
license, in 1537, in the families, to be read 
without let or hinderance. Cranmer's 
Bible was printed A. D. 1539; the Ge- 
neva Bible was printed A. D. 1560 ; the 
Bishop's Bible a few years after ; and by 
a canon law of 15 71, in the reign of 
Elizabeth, " All archbishops and bishops 
were required to have a copy of it in 
thejr halls for the use of strangers, and 



204 The Great Conflict, 

by a canon of 1603 it was ordered to be 
used as the authorized version in all the 
churches, and finally our present English 
version of King James appeared A. D. 
161 1. For nearly a century the discus- 
sions of a translation of the Bible into 
the vernacular for the use of all the peo- 
ple had been going on, and these various 
translations had been made, and large 
editions circulated ; till at last, in self- 
defense, Rome was obliged to translate 
the Bible Into English, and the Douay 
Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate 
of the Old Testament by Gregory Mar- 
tin, and combined with a former transla- 
tion of the New Testament published at 
Rheims, in France, in A. D. 1582, was 
printed at Douay, A. D. 16 10, one year 
before our present authorized version. 

It Is a remarkable fact that during all 
this period the English language itself 
was In a formative state, and perfecting 
itself; while a translation of the Inspired 



As Delineated in History. 205 

word, from the original Hebrew and 
Greek, with religious care and the com- 
bined learning of the nation, was being 
perfected, so that the language and its 
Bible has grown up together into an 
inseparable union ; and the heart of the 
English-speaking race has become so 
imbued with the principles, the religion, 
the civil liberty, the religious freedom, 
and the self-reliant individuality taught 
by the Bible, that no place is left in that 
heart for the blind subserviency and 
childish superstition of Rome ; so that 
the race, with its Bible-imbued language, 
stands out as a wall of fire — a quenchless 
flame against Antichrist. 

Nearly eighty millions of the English- 
speaking race are by their commerce, 
their superior intelligence, and indomi- 
table energy, diffused through all quar- 
ters of the globe. Rome must turn away 
the heart of that race from its open Bi- 
ble, from its intense love of freedom, and 



2o6 The Great Conflict, 

convert It back to the ignorance and 
superstition and darkness of the Papacy, 
and subvert the British Government and 
our own republic, and blot out the race, 
or go down before it. The English Bi- 
ble in the English language, in the En- 
glish-speaking heart, is too much for it ; 
it is the Word of His mouth that is con- 
suming the Papacy away from the earth, 
till no place is found for it. But this is 
not all. 

THE BIBLE IN ROMISH NATIONS. 

Rome can no longer keep the Bible 
out of the hands of the Latin races — of 
the people under her rule — as through the 
dark ages. It is not only in English and 
German, but in all the languages of 
Europe, that the printing-press, terrible 
engine against the Papacy, is pouring it 
into all the families of the nations. 

In Italy, and Rome itself — the very 
seat of the beast — the " word of God is " 



As Delineated in History. 207 

no longer "bound." In full view of the 
Vatican, on the opposite side of the 
Tiber, under the very eye of the Pope, is 
the prominently lettered sign of the 
beautifully fitted up depot of the British 
and Foreign Bible Society, well replen- 
ished with Italian Bibles for the people 
of Rome and Italy, and Bibles also in 
all the languages spoken in that metrop- 
olis of the Roman Catholic world ; a 
power far more potent and damaging 
than the decrees of Henry VIII., mis- 
chievous as they were, against the ful- 
minations of Rome in the days of its 
power. Evangelical Christians, without 
the fear of Pope or Inquisition before 
their eyes, with the open Bible, worship 
God in public assemblies, according to 
the dictates of their own consciences. 
The Pope has once permitted a public 
discussion between his chosen cham- 
pions and Protestants with Bible argu- 
ments on the question whether St. Peter, 



2o8 The -Great Conflict, 

the first Pope, ever was in Rome. A 
question of no importance to Protes- 
tants, but, if decided in the negative, it 
leaves the Papal succession decapitated. 
The Pope will probably never consent to 
a renewal of the discussion in public. 

Within a few years over forty evan- 
gelical Churches have been gathered and 
organized in Italy. Thousands of Bibles 
every year are distributed and eagerly 
read, for the long prohibited book has 
now all the attractions of novelty, and 
the people wonder why it has been kept 
from them so long. 

It is only about three years since the 
liberty of Protestant worship was grant- 
ed in Spain, the land of the Inquisition, 
and already there are upward of twenty 
evangelical congregations in which are 
considerable numbers of converted souls 
from Romanism and sin. In Madrid 
alone are seven evangelical Churches ; 
and the Word of God, with its light and 



As Delineated in History. 209 

its truth, is sounding out through the 
nation, and its former darkness and 
bigotry is passing away. As Rome goes 
down, the nation awakens into a new 
life. 

During the late war between France 
and Prussia more than eighty thousand 
French soldiers were compelled to cross 
the Swiss frontiers to avoid falling into 
the hands of the Prussians. They were 
disarmed and quartered in Switzerland 
till peace. Multitudes of them were 
supplied with Bibles and Testaments in 
their native language. At the declara- 
tion of peace they were followed by mis- 
sionaries back to France. Gratitude for 
kind treatment, and the gift of the Word 
of God, has wrought a wonderful change 
in their religious views ; and the remark 
is common among the more intelligent 
of them, " If France does not become 
Protestant in ten years she is lost." The 

destruction or consumption of Roman- 
14 



2IO The Great Conflict, 

ism by the Bible and the Gospel of 
Jesus is, indeed, the salvation of France. 
The Bible alone in the hands, and its 
truths in the intellects and hearts of the 
people of Europe will redeem her from 
the darkness and delusions and degrada- 
tion of Romanism. 

But it is not in Roman Europe alone 
that the Bible is doing its glorious work. 
In Roman America, too, it is bearing the 
light and life of salvation. 

In 1847, during the war with Mex- 
ico, many Bibles went with the United 
States army to the city of Mexico. 
Says Major-general S. Casey: "Rev. 
Mr. Norris was sent out by the Amer- 
ican Bible Society, and succeeded, by 
the aid of the Government trains, in 
transporting to the city quite a number 
of Spanish Bibles and Testaments, which 
were deposited in my quarters." " I dis- 
tributed Bibles and Testaments in fam- 
ilies of my acquaintance, and through 



As Delineated in History. 211 

the assistance of other officers over one 
hundred copies were distributed among 
families of their acquaintance." " I can- 
not but think that the year's presence of 
the American army in Mexico was of 
great benefit to the people." " I know 
that the Scriptures were taken by mem- 
bers of the army, and I believe the Mex- 
icans became possessed of them even 
before the Bible Society operated on 
that field." ^ The fruits of this Bible 
distribution and reading have become 
wonderfully apparent within a few years. 
The British Bible Society also followed 
the French army into Mexico with the 
Bible. It was then a prohibited book 
by Mexican law ; but conquest gave the 
word of God to some of the people, and 
it has proved good seed. A woman 
with the Bible in her hands and the love 
of Jesus in her heart has been too 
mighty for Rome and her priesthood. 

*" Christian World," February, 1873. 



212 The Great Conflict, 

Not long after the war of 1847 Miss 
Mellnda Rankin opened a school for 
Mexican children in Brownsville, Texas, 
on the borders of Mexico, and Inhabited 
largely by Mexicans. There soon grew 
up a demand for the Spanish Bible even 
across the border — the more, probably, 
because then it was a prohibited book — 
and over fifteen hundred Bibles found 
their way, through this agency, into 
Mexican families in Northern Mexico. 
In 1865 she moved across the river to 
Monterey, and established a female sem- 
inary there, and through colporteurs and 
missionaries has distributed thousands 
of Bibles. The result has been the gath- 
ering of several evangelical congrega- 
tions in that part of Mexico. This work 
for several years has been under the 
patronage of the American and Foreign 
Christian Union. In Central Mexico 
the work has been still more marked, 
and the success more marvelous under 



As Delineated in History, 213 

the labors of Rev. H. C. Riley, a mis- 
sionary of the same Society. By the 
diffusion of the Bible and preaching the 
Gospel over sixty congregations have 
been organized, with over thirty preach- 
ers of the Gospel, several of them con- 
verted Roman priests. Two of the 
finest churches in the city of Mexico 
have been transferred by the Govern- 
ment to the use of evangelical congre- 
gations. 

"In i860 the liberal party gained the 
ascendency over the priestly party, and 
proclaimed full toleration for the Bible 
and the Protestant religion." Give Mex- 
ico the Bible — a new book to the people 
— and the Gospel, and Romanism, the 
incubus and curse of that country, is 
doomed. 

In all the South American Republics, 
and in Brazil, the Bible, in spite of the 
Roman priesthood, is gradually making 
its way among the people, and awakening 



214 The Great Conflict, 

them to a knowledge of human rights, 
not only to civil liberty, but to the 
liberty of reading and studying God's 
revealed will for themselves ; and the 
Governments, long under the dominion 
of the priests, are every year becoming 
more liberal and tolerant of religious 
liberty, and more bold to defend it. 

Under these successive shocks of " the 
great earthquake," by the providence 
and word of God, the institutions of 
Romanism in Europe and the world, as 
"the cities of the nation," in the pro- 
phetic description, are falling. " The 
great city " is already " divided into 
three parts" — the Infallibilists, led by 
the Jesuits and the Pope ; the Old Cath- 
olics, under the lead of Dollinger, Rein- 
kens, Von Schulte, Huber, Friedrich, 
Hyacinth, and others; and the Evan- 
gelicals, under Gavazzi and other con- 
verted priests, who are making their 
escape from falling Babylon. 



As Delineated in History. 215 

How wonderful the changes in a few 
short years ! How is it possible that 
the old prophets, looking from the dim- 
ness of their times through the inter- 
vening darkness of the ages, could have 
seen more clearly or described more ac- 
curately the old foe of God and the 
Church, consuming as in fire " by the 
spirit" of his mouth and the brightness 
of his revelation. Who can read and 
compare with each other these remark- 
able predictions, then read through the 
history of the ages of their perfect ful- 
fillment, and not stand in awe before 
the Bible as Gods own voice from 
heaven to men ? 



2i6 The Great Conflict, 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS AT THIS 
CRISIS IN THE CONFLICT. 

AT this crisis in the great conflict 
between Christ and Antichrist, be- 
tween the Church and the Apostasy, 
what is our duty as Christians ? 

In the heat of the " battle of the great 
day of God Almighty," we are brought 
to the point of seeing the enemy giving 
way at all points. It seems only neces- 
sary to bring up the reserves for the 
last, final charge, to gain a complete vic- 
tory. Still, we are not to be too confi- 
dent ; there is life and vigor in the enemy 
yet with its allies, the corrupt powers of 
earth, and nowhere more than in this 
land. It may rally, and give us disaster 
yet, if we fold our arms and lose the 



As Delineated in History. 217 

^advantages already gained. The danger 
is in a parley, a compromise. "There are 
not wanting men among us, in our ranks 
— learned, eloquent, good men — who 
look and wait for the reform of this sys- 
tem ; who expect Rome to be reformed 
and brought into fellowship with all the 
Churches of Jesus. The system is inca- 
pable of a reform. Luther tried it, and 
failed. The Old Catholics in Germany, 
Belgium, and France, while holding on 
to the hierarchy in form, are trying it ; 
have given a constitution to protect the 
Church against the tyranny of the Pa- 
pacy ; have lopped off the mariolatry 
and idolatry, and papal infallibility and 
obligation to auricular confession, from 
their division of the old system ; and, 
still more, are giving the people the 
Bible and the Church service in the 
vernacular. In such work we most cor- 
dially " give them the right hand of fel- 
lowship." They are traveling the road 



2t8 The Great Conflict, 

that, Luther trod, only now the , Pope's 
bulls have lost their terrible power, and 
the occupant of the Vatican, like Bun- 
yans Giant Despair, can only make 
faces and grin at them. They are al- 
ready excommunicated from the vene- 
rated Church, only that has not now in 
it the terrors of hell. If they are strong 
enough to carry the people with them in 
lopping off all the errors of the system, 
they will find nothing left of it, but that 
the people have returned to a primitive 
apostolic Christianity. They will find 
Rome what Luther found her, " the 
mother of harlots and abomination of 
the whole earth." 

But it is said " there is so much Chris- 
tian doctrine and truth at the founda- 
tion of the system it can be reformed and 
preserved." There is truth at the foun- 
dations of all religions — Mohammedism, 
paganism, heathenism. Idolatry, in all 
its forms, grows out of the true yearn- 



As Delineated in History, 219 

ings of the human understanding for a 
FORM, an incarnation of the infinite, in- 
comprehensible One. Is the system of 
Buddhism and Mohammedism, there- 
fore, to stand, or be reformed? Is the 
system of Judaism, God's own institu- 
tion, though wrapt up and obscured and 
falsified " by the traditions of men," to 
last because there was truth at the 
foundation ? Sweep away the heresies 
of Rome, and the system is gone. Strip 
off the traditions of men, and there is 
nothing left of it. Truth only is left ; 
that it could not pervert or destroy. 

If the first Antichrist, the levitical 
priesthood, the Jewish Sanhedrim, with 
their system of bloody rites, could have 
been reformed and perpetuated after 
the crucifixion of Christ, this can be. 
That was not intended for reform, but 
destruction, and the blood of the proph- 
ets and of Jesus fell upon that Apostasy. 
If we read prophecy aright, the blood of 



220 The Great Conflict, 

the millions of the martyrs of Jesus must 
fall upon this in a most signal display of 
Divine justice, such that the world shall 
see and acknowledge that God hath 
avenged the Church on her. 

It is time for us to be done with 
our Protestantism against the errors of 
Rome. The whole hierarchy is base 
and baseless as a system of Christianity. 
It is the substitution of another founda- 
tion for the true — " a building on the 
sand." It is, in its very nature and es- 
sence. Antichrist. Let a member of that 
Church become a truly enlightened Bi- 
ble Christian, and the system, or his con- 
science, or both, will drive him out of it. 
There can be no fellowship between 
Christ and Antichrist. It is doomed 
of Heaven to utter destruction. The 
masses, under the delusions of the sys- 
tem, may be reformed, and, we believe, 
are to be reformed out of it, till it shall 
be found no more at all ; and the halle- 



As Delineated in History, 221 

lula of earth and heaven shall come up 
before God. " For he hath judged the 
great whore, which did corrupt the earth 
with her fornication, and hath avenged 
the blood of his servants at her hands." 

THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH. 

The pressing duty devolving upon the 
Church at the present hour is, mani- 
festly. 

First. To maintain our position where 
we stand, not to weaken our front before 
the enemy by any dalliance or compro- 
mise. We must maintain the Bible, a 
Bible education, and a Bible Christian- 
ity here at home in this country, for 
here, at this hour, is the field of the hot- 
test conflict ; this land is expected to be 
won for Rome by the votaries of that 
system. 

Second. "We must carry the war into 
Africa ;" we must, at the same time, in- 
vade the whole Roman world with the 



222 The Great Conflict, 

Bible and the pure Gospel of Jesus. 
This is pre-eminently the work for the 
day above all other fields of Christian 
effort. There would seem to be no need 
of argument on this point, were it not 
for the fact that some in our own ranks 
— officers, too, and high in the Church — 
seem disposed to counsel dalliance and 
compromises; to parley, and yield po- 
sitions to the foe. 

Rome covertly attacks our national 
system of popular education, but as a 
feint attacks what she calls our Protest- 
ant Bible in the common school. "Well," 
says one, " they are citizens of our com- 
mon country, and entitled to all its free- 
dom and privileges, and our Bible to 
them is a sectarian book; compromise 
the matter, and, to save the common 
school system, take the Bible out." What 
other sect, Jew or gentile, complains of 
our version as being a sectarian Bible ? 
Who does not know that their war is 



As Delineated in History. 223 

not with the version, but with the Bible 
in any version ? But we deny that our 
version, without note or comment, is a 
sectarian Bible even to Romans. Most 
of it is derived from Roman translators, 
by men educated in that system, though 
martyred, perhaps, for translating the 
book at all into the vernacular. 

This point, however, I would yield. 
I would furnish Roman Catholic chil- 
dren with the Douay version, their own 
accepted Bible. There is no difficulty 
in using both versions in the same class. 
All would soon see how very slight the 
difference in the sense, except the Ro- 
man notes, and some of them so mani- 
festly weak attempts to warp the text 
out of its simple and obvious meaning 
to support the errors of that Church, 
that the mind of a child could hardly 
fail to see it. 

We gain nothing, even with Rome, 
by taking the Bible out of our common 



224 The Great Conflict, 

schools ; indeed, she professes that the 
Bible is not the real objection, but our 
schools are Godless, the more so if the 
Bible is out. She demands a religious 
training of her own choice. It must be 
a Roman Catholic education. As na- 
tional schools cannot be taught in her 
exclusive way, she demands that the 
system be broken up, and a large share 
of the public money be handed over to 
her Church, to educate their children in 
their way, or, much more likely, keep 
them in ignorance. She demands a sec- 
tarian training, not a national education. 
She works for Rome, chiefly, contin- 
ually, and not for our free, intelligent 
republic. A system of unsectarian gen- 
eral education, on the broad morals and 
religion of the Bible, does not suit her, 
for the very reason that it would not 
promote her interests. 

Says the same writer : " I should like 
to have the Westminster Catechism 



As Delineated in History. 225 

taught in our common schools as in 
olden times, but it is not the duty of the 
State to give a theological education, 
but it is its duty to give a secular edu- 
cation." A SECULAR education ? Pray, 
what is that ? You may give your dogs, 
and horses, and oxen, and asses a sec- 
ular education, an intellectual training, 
too, and so teach them to use their mus- 
cles for your ease, and comfort, and 
wealth and that of the State. But can 
you give an immortal being an exclu- 
sively secular education, as if an earthly 
existence and earthly relations were all 
of him, as with the brutes that perish .? 
What would the State make him by its 
SECULAR education ? A gladiator ? an 
athlete? a prize-fighter.^ a trained sol- 
dier for the army 1 — as if the nation 
and the world were to be governed by 
physical force ; as if government were 
only an earthly organization or compact 
system of forces for earth alone, without 

15 



226 The Great Conflict, 

moral sense or religious obligation. 
Rome would not object to that system 
of education if you will let her give her 
form and shaping to it, and cramp the 
religious element inherent in humanity 
into her cardinal doctrine — source of her 
power — of implicit, unquestioning obe- 
dience to a superior. 

But it will be said we include in a 
secular education grammar, geography, 
arithmetic, the natural sciences, and his- 
tory. 

Teach grammar without awakening 
the religious element or moral sense ! 
What is the origin of language ? For 
whom is it ? Who capable of its use ? 
Whence came it but from a Father in 
the heavens? To whom but his chil- 
dren, for communion with him and with 
each other? 

Teach geography, and leave the moral 
sense, the religious element, untouched ! 
The mountains, the rivers, the ocean, the 



As Delmeated in History, 227 

earth, whence are they ? They are all 
changing, and, with all things material, 
passing away. Only the Unseen, that 
lies behind and beneath them all, is 
changeless, and permanent, and real — 
the Eternal. The sciences of numbers, 
of quantities, of measures, what are 
they but rational ideas in the immortal 
mind, both the power of knowing and 
the knowledge of the laws of the phys- 
ical universe ? Awaken all these ele- 
ments of thought and knowledge, and 
set the intellect to coursing through the 
vast dominions of the infinite God, and 
leave the religious element in the soul 
untouched ! Study the history of the 
race on earth, and find no God in his- 
tory, no unseen, supreme Power gov- 
erning the nations as he pleases ! An 
exclusively secular education is a soph- 
ism, a vagary, an impossibility. If you 
educate immortal mind, you must educate 
it wholly, in all its powers, as immortal, 



228 The Great Conflict, 

or dwarf It and pervert it. Besides, 
for what purpose does the republican 
State educate, but to teach the whole 
mass rational self-government under just 
laws ? but to make intelligent, moral, 
honorable, good citizens, under a sense 
of moral obligation to the State and to 
each other ? but to make them legis- 
lators for the public good ? To think 
of accomplishing such an object without 
a moral and religious element in its ed- 
ucation is a stupid absurdity. It is the 
solemn duty of the State, for its own 
protection and safety, to educate its cit- 
izens for good and useful members of 
the State. Such education should be 
compulsory. No child capable of moral 
and intellectual improvement should be 
permitted to grow up in ignorance. 
Such universal education is an imper- 
ative necessity to the safety and perpe- 
tuity of our free republic. 

It is not a " Godless " education, nor a 



As Delineated in History, 229 

technical " theological" training, that the 
State demands. I would not have the 
Westminster Catechism, nor the Thirty- 
nine Articles, nor the Methodist Disci- 
pline, nor any other sectarian formula, 
taught in the State schools. I know none 
of them are found in form in the Bible, 
and it is somewhat doubtful whether 
all the sentiments of either of them are 
found in God's word. No, we want a 
national, unsectarian, intellectual, moral, 
and religious education on the broad 
principles of the Bible in our common 
schools. Who objects to it ? Not the 
Jew, for we stand on common ground 
relative to the books of the Old Testa- 
ment ; and while he denies the inspira- 
tion of the New Testament, and some 
of its facts, perhaps, he does not object to 
it as a school book. Not the unbeliever 
in a Divine revelation at all, for the 
Bible, as a school book, can do his chil- 
dren no harm. The objection comes 



230 The Great Conflict, 

alone from a priesthood owing alle- 
giance to a foreign Government. The 
impudent demand is a war on the Bi- 
ble in the vernacular of the people ; a 
war on general intelligence and inde- 
pendent thought; a war on civil and 
religious freedom ; a covert scheme to 
subvert the Government or bring it 
under Roman rule. 

Under Bible truth, free, independent 
thought, general intelligence, Romanism 
consumes as in a flame ; it must put out 
the fire or perish. So we cannot so 
much blame her efforts to extinguish 
the flame and bring the youth of the 
land under her own training. The strug- 
gle for life, and gnawing her tongue for 
pain, is to be expected, for she is tor- 
mented in this flame. An independent 
government of religious freedom and 
civil liberty is too much for the " Scarlet 
Lady ; " she prefers to ride the old beast 
of the " seven heads and ten horns." 



As Delineated in History. 231 

But it will be said — it is said — that 
Governments have no religion, and there- 
fore they cannot and it is not their duty 
to teach religion. Religion is an indi- 
vidual affair, and it is the duty of the 
Church only to teach religion to the 
individual. That may be in part true of 
a military despotism, or of any absolute- 
ism under priestcraft or kingcraft, or 
both combined, or of an anarchy under 
the combined passions of a lawless rab- 
ble ; but what of an organized govern- 
ment of law under the combined will of 
the whole people ? It is not true, and 
cannot be true of such a government, for 
such a government cannot subsist with- 
out a religion, without moral obligation, 
resting on the immutable law of right 
and equity. If a religion is implanted 
in the heart and life of the individual 
from any source, the aggregation of indi- 
viduals make the democratic or repub- 
lican government, and such a govern- 



232 The Great Conflict, 

ment has of necessity a religion as a 
foundation of oaths and contracts, and 
the protection of inalienable rights, and 
judicial punishments for violation of law 
and right. Whatever may have been 
the governments of the past, the world is 
verging toward a religious government, 
in which the voice of the people is the 
voice of God, and the immutable law of 
God is the law of the people's govern- 
ment. The " bugaboo " of the " union of 
Church and State " need not alarm any 
one, when God rules both of them by 
the law of love and equity. It is only a 
perverted Church and a perverted State, 
made a double tyranny by the union, we 
need fear ; and such has been the rule 
of Rome, and will be again anywhere, if 
she can gain the ascendency. The Bible 
in the hands of all the people, and God's 
word in the hearts of all, will make a 
State what a State ought, and is, to be, a 
government that has a religion. Let no 



As Delineated in History. 233 

man — no enlightened patriot will — aid 
Rome to put out that light, and hold 
back that glorious consummation of a 
perfect State, toward which our republic, 
with all its faults, verges more nearly, 
perhaps, than any civil Government now 
on the globe. 

But furthermore, no permanent or 
stable Government ever has existed or 
can without a religion, unless it be the 
French Government under Robespierre, 
and that soon broke up, (so it is no 
exception to the remark,) and no infidel 
Frenchman can wish the return of such 
a Government. 

The religious element is so much a 
part of man, so essential to him, that no 
Government can hold sway over the race 
without a religion as an essential element 
and controlling power in It. It is not 
necessary or expedient, in the present 
Imperfection of the State or the Church, 
that it should have an established 



234 The Great Conflict, 

Church as the depository or expounder 
of the States reHglon. Religion, the 
true, is one thing, and the organized form 
of it into the Church is another, and 
sometimes quite another and diverse 
thing. In all the history of the race, in 
all the books ever penned, no book so 
simply, so clearly, so beautifully embod- 
ies and unfolds the true religion of and 
for humanity as the Bible. No ! no ! 
we will not suffer the foundations of our 
glorious republic to be sapped and 
ruined by a concealed, insidious foe. 
Our system of national, republican edu- 
cation must be sustained and perfected, 
and made universal, and the Bible in it, 
as the foundation of all right self-govern- 
ment under law. Give up the Bible ! 
knock away the very foundations of the 
State ! then try to build the superstruct- 
ure on nothing but the blind will of an 
Ignorant, Immoral, senseless rabble. To 
the Decalogue, the great constitution 



As Delineated in History, 235 

of God-governed nations ; to the legisla- 
tion of Moses (no, not of Moses, but of 
God) we go for all right legislation ; to 
the Bible history of nations as unfolding 
the foundations of national prosperity 
and power, and the causes of national 
degradation and ruin ; to its peerless, 
truthful biography, unfolding human 
goodness and greatness, and human vice 
and degradation, as causes and results of 
both ; to its pure, unalloyed ethics and 
morals ; to its matchless and sublime 
poetry ; to its Divine prophecies, the 
pre-written history of the ages, we go for 
the light and the life of our country's 
government, as well as the light and the 
life of our immortal souls. Let all the 
children, all the coming generations, read 
it, till it becomes familiar as household 
words ; pure and simple, let it be a part, 
and a foundation part, of our nation's 
education. Shall we pluck out our eyes, 
and our children's too, at the artful in- 



236 The Great Conflict, 

sinuation of the old serpent, seven head- 
ed in his wiles, but foe of God and man, 
or at the specious appeals and subtle 
arguments of his incarnation, his vice- 
gerent on earth ? Will our own be- 
loved and respected friends join in the 
request and argument ? Away with all 
such parleying, all such stupid fallacy ! 
We will neither give up the common 
school, nor the Bible in it. This is the 
unshaken, undaunted front the people 
must present to the foe ; if politicians 
waver, let them retire, or go over to the 
foe. 

Secondly. We must carry this conflict 
with the vigor of a final charge into all 
the dominions of Rome. We have at 
the present moment a singular advan- 
tage in this direction. The Bible is a 
NEW BOOK to the masses of Roman Cath- 
olics. It comes to them with all the 
freshness and interest of novelty. Even 
the Papal prohibition of the Book to 



As Delineated in History, 237 

the masses, in the present state of the 
Roman world, with the exception of Ire- 
land, perhaps, stimulates the desire to 
know what is in the Book about which 
there has been so much controversy. 
God's spirit, too, in a wonderful manner, 
goes with his Word, and unfolds its truth 
to the consciences and hearts of its 
eager readers or hearers just waking 
out of the delusions of Romanism. 
Many of them, converted and in love 
with the book, are eager to carry the 
boon to their deluded countrymen. 

The great want at the present hour, in 
this conflict, is not so much laborers, as 
money to sustain those agencies already 
in the field, and preparing by God's word 
and Spirit for the work. Those agencies 
are already springing up in every Rom- 
ish country on the globe, generally 
among the poor in this world's goods, 
but who would gladly, often in the midst 
of persecution, become Bible colporteurs. 



238 The Great Conflict, 

Sabbath-school teachers, and Bible read- 
ers, to their own kindred and country- 
men, and lead them forth from the dark- 
ness and delusions of Romanism into 
the light and liberty of the Gospel of 
Jesus. 

The American and Foreign Christian 
Union, undenominational in its board 
and its missions, seemed to be the best 
organized agency in this country for this 
field of foreign mission work, and has 
for years occupied these fields in Italy, 
Spain, Mexico, and other South Amer- 
ican Republics, with no inconsiderable 
success. We deeply regret, therefore, 
the recent action of that Board in giving 
up its foreign work, though compelled, 
perhaps, by the late denominational 
movements on those fields, and the con- 
sequent probable withdrawal of patron- 
age from that Society. 

We did hope there was one agency 
through which the Protestant Church 



As Delmeated in History. 239 

could present a united front to Roman- 
ism. Romanists have a strong attach- 
ment to the term Catholic — the Holy 
Catholic Church, the universal Christian 
brotherhood, where " Christ is not di- 
vided." 

They have strong prejudices against 
the various names, even, of the different 
Protestant sects. It has been the stand- 
ing argument of their bishops and priests 
against the private interpretation of the 
Scriptures, and placing the Bible in the 
hands of the people, that it has led 
to such divisions of the Church ; albeit 
the Protestant Church, with all its de- 
nominationalism, is more nearly a unit to- 
day than Romanism, with all its boasted 
unity. But I deny in toto that " private 
interpretation " by the common people, 
regenerate souls, ever has made these 
divisions and sects in the Church. In 
the " inner court " of the temple of God 
on earth, where the Holy Ghost reveals 



240 The Great Conflict, 

the truths of the Bible to "babes," teach- 
able, trusting souls, there has ever been 
" the unity of the Spirit In the bonds of 
peace." The conflicts and divisions have 
ever been in the " outer courts," among 
the learned, the " wise, and prudent," 
about the frame-work of the Church ; 
not so much about the truth in the 
Bible's own inimitable exhibition, appre- 
hensible by the common reason, received 
by simple faith, as the outward mani- 
festation, or scientific formulas and log- 
ical definitions by which the learned 
have tried to bring them within the 
grasp of the finite understanding, to 
meet the demands of the speculative 
and skeptical. 

Those early conflicts with errors and 
heresies that led to the first Nicene 
Council, of over three hundred bishops, 
(A. D. 325,) and the second Council, at 
Constantinople, (A. D. 381,) that ma- 
tured the Nicene Creed as the author- 



As Delineated in History » 241 

itative interpretation of the Bible, or the 
exhibition of Christian doctrines, were 
the works of the learned, to whom the 
Bible was accessible, almost alone, be- 
fore the art of printing. 

This principle of authoritative inter- 
pretation by the few learned, for the 
many, went into Romanism, grew with 
its growth and strengthened with its 
strength, till the Bible became alto- 
gether unnecessary for the common 
people, and the authoritative decrees of 
councils and the bulls of Popes assumed 
and presumed to declare God's will to 
men. This, and not " private interpre- 
tation," is the source of the struggles 
and divisions in the Church of Rome, 
that resulted at last in Protestantism 
against the tyranny and heresies of a 
Church without the Bible. 

When in the early days of the Refor- 
mation there was a return to God's word 
and its teachings, the Bible was in the 

16 



242 The Great Conflict, 

hands of the common people to but a 
very Hmited extent ; few, even, were able 
to read it. The reformers were obliged, 
therefore, to draw out from it, compends 
of Christian doctrine, rules of Church 
organization and government, and forms 
of worship. Amid the stirring contro- 
versies of the times, the thick darkness 
from which they were just emerging; the 
various nationalities; the different tem- 
peraments and mental characteristics of 
the great Reformers, the wonder is not 
that these creeds are so many, but that 
they are so few, and in their essential 
characteristics so similar. They are still 
the foundations of the various modern 
sects and denominations. They are 
still taught first to the children of the 
Church, then, somehow, Bible interpreta- 
tion by the teacher is made to conform 
so that it is still in a sense authoritative 
teaching, not private interpretation, that 
keeps up the sects and divisions. 



As Delineated in History. 243 

The Bible has been the best abused 
book, both by friends and foes, of any 
book ever penned. The arbitrary ar- 
rangement of its books in our ver- 
sion, and, indeed, all versions, trans- 
lated and original ; the mangling of 
subjects, by divisions into chapters and 
verses, has tended greatly to obscure 
the sense of the sacred books to the un- 
learned and common mind ; hence to a 
very great extent the ignorance, indiffer- 
entism, and skepticism that prevail. The 
people do not study, understand, and 
interpret the book for themselves. 

Now let us have the books in their 
chronological order, the successive vis- 
ions of the patriarchs and prophets, in 
the midst of the surroundings in which 
the visions were revealed and uttered. 
Let us have the revelation as God has 
gradually unfolded it to the world, with 
its wonderful unity of design and fixed 
end and aim, through so many ages, by 



244 The Great Conflict, 

so many inspired authors. Give it to 
the youth, to the little children of all the 
people, as the first book of knowledge — 
God's book. Lay the creeds aside as 
monuments of the wisdom of the past. 
*' Worship God in spirit and in truth," 
without the forms or with the forms, as 
convenient or of little worth ; and under 
the teachings of the Holy Ghost, in the 
" private interpretation " by the common 
people, the world would soon see such 
Church unity, not only in spirit, but in 
organization and form, as has not been 
seen since the day of Pentecost ; and sec- 
tarianism, and skepticism, and Roman- 
ism vanish away before the power of 
God's word revealed in the hearts of 
men. Romanists have strong prejudices 
also against a conversion to Presbyte- 
rianism, or Congregationalism, or Meth- 
odism, or any other sectarianism ; but 
being already Catholic Christians, not 
that prejudice to a real conversion to 



As Delineated in History. 245 

Christ, to a true Catholic Christianity, 
that is only giving up the errors of 
Romanism to become a true Catholic 
Christian, 

Any denominational organization has 
these prejudices to encounter, these 
difficulties to meet, which a union effort 
might avoid. 

It would be a new and wonderful 
development in Divine Providence if, 
in this last conflict with Antichrist, and 
the united efforts of Christians to con- 
vert a Roman world to Christ, a true 
Catholic Christianity should spring up, 
and sectarian denominationalism should 
fade away, and a divided Christianity 
should become one, including evangel- 
ized, converted Roman Catholics, and 
the Church stand up in its united 
strength in the spirit and inspiration of 
its Divine Head and Redeemer. 

What is Mohammedism, or pagan- 
ism, or Judaism, or skepticism before 



246 The Great Conflict. 

such a power? It is Christ on earth 
again in a glorified, triumphant incarna- 
tion. Let us not go forth after Romans 
as Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Con- 
gregationalists, or Baptists, or Dutch 
Reformed, or Episcopalians, but as Chris- 
tians with the Bible and the Gospel of 
Jesus to convert them to Christ, to a 
true Catholic Christianity. 

One word as to the spirit with which 
we should labor for the conversion of 
Roman Catholics. We cannot forget 
the blood of the martyrs the Papacy has 
shed ; but with the spirit of Paul toward 
his persecuting countrymen, " I could 
wish that myself were accursed from 
Christ " (crucified as he was) " for my 
brethren, my kinsmen according to the 
flesh," could I but save them in and 
from their mistaken zeal against Christ ; 
and in the spirit of the dying Jesus' last 
prayer, " Father, forgive them for they 
know not what they do," should we go 



As Delineated in History, 247 

forth for the utter destruction of this 
Satanic, soul-destroying system by the 
conversion and eternal salvation of its 
deluded subjects. 

In all the history of missions, when 
and where has Divine Providence opened 
such a field for the immediate and ear- 
nest efforts of the Church, as among the 
two hundred millions of Roman Cath- 
olics ? They have already the cardinal 
doctrines and great facts of Christianity 
— the existence of one Triune God, the 
incarnation of the Son of God, the 
atonement through Christ — they are al- 
ready awaking, amid the incoming of a 
general intelligence, from the slumbers 
of their long night of error and delu- 
sion ; they need but the Bible, borne by 
warm evangelical hearts imbued by its 
truths, and a new life from the dead 
springs up, and they come out from 
Rome to Christ. 

What the power and results of such 



248 The Great Conflict, 

a conversion ? Mohammedans, pagans, 
and Jews have known Roman Christian- 
ity as a persecuting power, yet they sup- 
posed it to be Christianity. They have 
seen it as a false light, and despised it 
as a delusion ; but that system perishes, 
and with it the prejudices of a world 
against it ; and the true Church of Jesus 
stands forth in its stead three hundred 
fnillion strong, as God's host arrayed in 
a new and more Divine glory, to conquer 
the world by prayer, by love, by the Holy 
Ghost. With this accession, and this 
great host united in one solid phalanx, 
and the conquest of the rest of the world 
is quick and easy ; but leave the Roman 
world in its present state a few years 
without the Bible and the Gospel of 
Jesus, and a hard, cold, brutish, ignorant 
infidelity against all religion usurps the 
place of papal rule, and a more dismal 
night of deeper darkness settles down 
on those millions and on the world. 



As Delineated in History, 249 

Will the Church permit it? Can she 
lose this occasion, and be guiltless ? 
" 'Tis but an hour to fight." It is but 
a little sacrifice now of treasure, and 
ease, and luxury, and the victory, the 
glorious triumph of the Church, is cer- 
tain ; the kingdoms of this world be- 
come the kingdom of Christ, and one 
THOUSAND MILLION of voIces of all lan- 
guages, " as the voice of many waters," 
sound the " halleluias to the Lamb 
that was slain, and hath redeemed us, 
and made us kings and priests unto 
God and the Lamb." 



THE END. 



THE 




OR, 

THE EMPIRE OF THE SEA. 

By H. Loomis, late Corresponding Secretary of the American 
Seamen's Friend Society. i6mo., pp. 279. Price, $1 25. 



The first edition of one thousand copies having 
been called for in less than three months, the Pub- 
lishers are encouraged to issue another, append- 
ing brief notices of the volume from the Newspaper 
Press. 

From Christian Advocatei 

For thirty years, first as Chaplain, and afterward as Secre- 
tary, the author of these discourses has been in the service of 
seamen. A thinker as well as an agent, he has developed a 
line of thought respecting the sea, its men and business, in 
their relation to the evangelization of the world, which to 
many readers will be entirely new. He writes with clearness, 
fervor, and power. Prophetic passages are brought out and 
specially applied to the commerce of to-day. " The land 
shadowing with wings" of Isa. xviii, 1-3, he holds to be "the 
United States as the ultimate commercial center and mis- 
sionary nation of the earth," which seems to be providenHally 
the fact, whether so seen by the prophet or not. The book 
richly merits a wide circulation for its vigorous thought, its 
fresh life, its beautiful presentation of great truths, and still 
more for its adaptedness to stir up the reader, whether preacher 
or layman, to mi^^sioimry zeal and power. 

X 



From New York Observer. 

" The Land of Shadowing Wings" is the title of a book, 
by Rev. Harmon Loomis, D.D., in which he gives the con- 
densed extract of discourses which won so many hearts and 
dollars for the American Seamen's Friend Society during the 
generation of his Secretaryship. If the many thousands who 
heard Dr. Loomis's earnest arguments and fervid plea for the 
sailor will revive their recollections of them by reading his 
book, they will find their spirit and aroma compressed and 
preserved. A good and popular cause was fortunate in secur- 
ing and so long retaining so able an advocate. He is an 
independent, original thinker, and while all readers may not 
accept his exegesis of Scripture, and especially the theory that 
gives the title to his book, they must admire the ingenuity, 
ability, and variety of his arguments and illustrations. 



From New York Evangelist. 

BY T. L. CUYLER, D.D. 

My neighbor, Rev. Dr. H. Loomis, has issued a capital 
volume since he left the Seamen's Friend Society and *' went 
into dry dock." There is a most spiritual and practical chap- 
ter in the work on giving to the Lord only such sacrifices as 
cost us something ; it is a most timely word on self-denial for 
the sake of Christ's treasury. Dr. Loomis preached to my 
congregation so eloquently and convincingly on this theme 
last Sabbath that they doubled their usual contribution for a 
certain benevolent object. Let me close this letter by sug- 
gesting whether, in many professedly Christian households, 
old-fashioned godly self-denial is not one of " the lost arts." 



From New York Evening Post. 

" The Land of Shadowing Wings." The explanation of 
this somewhat fantastic title is found in the fact that the 
author understands Isaiah to mean America when he speaks 
of " the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the 
rivers of Ethiopia." The design of the book is to exhibit the 
agency of man on the sea, and the effect of that agency upon 
civilization; to favor missionary enterprise; and, in general, 
to encourage and inform the sailor and all those " that go 
down to the sea in ships." 
2 



From Presbyterian, 

BY REV. J. E. ROCKWELL, D.D. 

I have been reading, with an interest which only increased 
as I advanced, a little work, by the Rev. Dr. H. Loomis, 
called the " Land of Shadowing Wings." The work itself 
will repay the perusal. It is the result of many years' expe- 
rience, and of long and earnest labor in behalf of those who 
"go down to the sea in ships." It indicates serious thought 
and study, as well as a warm and affectionate interest in the 
cause of which he has so long and successfully plead. I am 
sure no pastor can read it and not have his attention awakened 
and his sympathies aroused for the work which the Seamen's 
Friend Society is doing. No one can read this work and not 
feel that the sailor is to be one of the agents which Christ 
will use in the building up of his kingdom. 



From Christian Intelligencer. 

Thirty years of service in behalf of sailors entitles the 
author to a respectful hearing on this topic. Tracing his- 
torically the agency of man on the sea in connection with the 
march of civilization and Christianity, he presses upon the 
Church the duty and blessing of the conversion of this mighty 
agency to the service of God among the nations. The best 
part of this volume is that which shows the providential mis- 
sion of the commerce and travel of the oceans, and stirring 
arguments for increasing the moral and religious care of the 
sailor on deck and on shore. 



A Southern Chaplain's Opinion. 

" I have read the discourses," says a seamen's chaplain in a 
Southern port, *' with a great deal of interest, and most 
heartily thank you for their publication. T should think that 
quite a number of those who were so interested in the sermons 
' The Daughter of Tyre ' and ' The Mission of Commerce,' 
which you preached here, would be very glad to get the book 
containing them, as well as the others, especially the last, 
which is full of such grand thoughts of the mission and destiny 
of America." 

3 



From New York Independent. 

The book will be a pleasant souvenir to those persons who 
have heard the discourses ; and those to whom this felicity has 
not been granted will find upon its pages exegesis, history, 
anecdote, prophecy, and exhortation in great variety. 



From Sailor's Magazine. 

** The Land of Shadowing Wings." Under this title Rev. 
Dr. Loomis has launched upon the treacherous sea of popular 
favor a volume comprising the discourses preached by him in 
behalf of the seamen's cause during his long Secretaryship. 
We bespeak for it the consideration of his numerous friends 
throughout the country. 

Those who have been privileged to hear Dr. Toomis will 
recognize in his printed sermons many of the characteristics 
that make his preaching particularly effective. He has an in- 
teresting way of setting forth the truth, and a happy facility in 
illustration. 

He holds somewhat advanced views, especially on the pro- 
phecies, and maintains them with eloquent, if not always 
irresistible logic. His book is worth reading, and even those 
who may not agree with some of his positions will admit its 
ability and fascination. 

From Daily Christian Witness. 

"The Land of Shadowing Wings." Under this somewhat 
mysterious title Mr. Loomis has given us a very earnest and 
practical appeal for prayer and effort in behalf of two millions 
of hardly-treated, much-neglected seatnen. The author's 
translations of the Hebrew Scriptures are invariably beautiful 
and not improbable. 

From Hartford Religious Herald. 

The apt motto of this volume is *' The sea is His, and he 
made it," and the author says it is " not a volume of sermons 
on the ordinary topics of the pulpit, but of pleadings for the 
sailor and for the restoration of the empire of the sea to its 
rightful Sovereign. " This benevolent purpose is well executed. 
The book is an interesting and instructive one, more par- 
ticularly to those who " do business in the great waters." 
4 



From Boston Congregatlonalist. 

There is much that is interesting and profitable in the 
"Land of Shadowing Wings," which is a study of the great 
and wide sea, and of its needs in the light of the Gospel, by 
one who has long been connected with evangelistic effort in 
behalf of seamen. The concluding chapter is curious, and 
worthy of examination by students of Scripture, as giving the 
author's interpretation of Isaiah xviii, 1-3 ; which passage he 
applies with considerable ingenuity, to say the least, to the 
United States. This is a book for Sunday-school libraries. 

BY MONTAGUE. 

" The Land of Shadowing Wings ; or, The Empire of the 
Sea," is the title of collected discourses by Rev. Harmon 
Loomis, D.D., for twenty-seven years the Corresponding 
Secretary of the American Seamen's Friend Society. Here 
are to be found, in all freshness and in very attractive form, 
the powerful arguments and appeals which have so often 
moved so many in your neighborhood, as well as elsewhere, for 
the Christianizing of seamen. 



From California Christian Advocatei 

The mission of this volume is to the Church no less than to 
seamen. 



From Bethel Banner, Chicago. 

"The Land of Shadowing Wings; or, The Empire of the 
Sea." This is a volume, from the press of the Methodist Book 
Concern. Nelson & Phillips, by Rev. H. Loomis, D.D., for 
twenty-seven years Corresponding Secretary of the American 
Seamen's Friend Society. 

The first and sixth chapters discuss the Bible rule and prin- 
ciple of giving as a means of grace to the giver and for the 
redemption of men, and ought to be in every Christian family 
wishing to know their duty and privilege on that subject. 
The last two chapters are exegetical from that old store- 
house, the Hebrew of God's word, of the Forty-fifth Psalm, 
that vivid poetic description of the Messiah, as teacher, war- 
rior, conqueror, king, and bridegroom, ^t the marriage of the 

«5 



bride, the Lamb's wife ; and of that dark chapter, the 
eighteenth of Isaiah, which the author has undertaken to 
show, is a picture that fits with admirable exactness the United 
States as ultimately holding the Empire of the Sea. Whether 
the author is right or wrong in the exposition, at all events 
his interpretation looks quite plausible, and will hold till 
somebody gives a better one. These chapters are worthy the 
attention of those who love the study of the Bible. The chap- 
ters on the mission and on the conversion of commerce are 
worthy the attention of business and commercial men. The 
volume abounds in touching, and sometimes thrilling, incidents 
in the life of the sailor, and we hope, for the sake of the sailor 
and the cause, it will find many readers. 



Rev> Titus Coan, of Hilo, S. I., says: 

I have read "The Land of Shadowing Wings," by ex-Sec- 
retary Loomis. I like it. The thoughts and style are orig- 
inal, bold, vigorous, graphic, comprehensive, beautiful, and 
pioneering. The idea that America is the '* Land of Shad- 
owing Wings " (Isa. xviii) is novel, and quite interesting. 
Of its correctness I am not able to affirm or deny. Let Bib- 
lical and Oriental scholars give a better exegesis if they can. 
Each of the ten chapters has its peculiar merits, 
and all are excellent. But were I to select one out of the ten 
in which I was most deeply interested, I would take the 
ninth, entitled, " The Daughter of Tyre. " But the whole book 
is a gem. In thought and style it is logical, truthful, earn- 
est, eloquent, evangelical, and often tender and pathetic. I 
hope it will have a wide circulation, and continue to speak 
long after its author is dead. 
6 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Jan. 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Parte Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



13 y na 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 








bill 



•■ ff;iti h QVi W.fc^jf 

SWM 










